I have a memory of watching a late night comedy show (the internet tells me it was called Paramount City) sometime in the early nineties (the internet tells me it was 8th June 1991) and seeing Massive Attack playing "Safe From Harm" (the internet is not so certain on this one). This performance convinced me to buy the parent album "Blue Lines" on CD the following week and more lately, this unremarkable reissue of the LP in 2016.
The rumbling bass guitar sample that opens "Safe From Harm" should be annoying as, not only does it loop continuously throughout the song, but it is lifted wholesale from another track. Yet, there's so much layered over the top of this sample that you can't help but admire the ingenuity at play. Shara Nelson's vocal is exquisite and the synth chords provide a perfect accompaniment. There are many clever touches such as sampling 3-D's vocal and repeatedly triggering it to ensure the delivery is anything but mundane.
"One Love" is a change of pace in which Horace Andy delivers an inimitable vocal over sampled loops. The key here is that the melody is allowed to shine through and lift the track to a whole new level. We hear Tricky for the first time on the title track as the whole group get to rap over a breakbeat and some mellow electric piano. There's cover of an old school soul song, "Be Thankful For What You've Got" which I can only assume is a song the band admired as there's not much else to distinguish it. Side one finishes with the dub of "Five Man Army" in which the band rap over an Al Green loop and Horace Andy's ad libs.
The highlight of the album is undoubtedly "Unfinished Sympathy" which is rightly revered as a classic. This is a perfect recording that I'm not sure how anyone could criticise. Even if the rest of the album was made up of fart noises this song would still make it worthy of purchase. "Daydreaming" is built around a sample of a Wally Badarou track (which provides a nice link back to Level 42) and has another fantastic Shara Nelson vocal. Thanks to the samples that form the backbone of "Lately" it has an almost synth-pop vibe and makes for a nice change. The epic final track is "Hymn of the Big Wheel" which sees Horace Andy return to sing a tale of the earth's destruction as a whale impeaches us from the deep. 4/5
