Cuttings

9 BLUE LINES MASSIVE ATTACK Wild Bunch, 1991; chart position: 13 Ben Thompson on the West Country’s finest FROM THE metropolitan angst of‘Safe from Harm’ -‘If you hurt what’s mine, I’ll sure as hell retaliate’ - to the insistent shaken bottle-top rhythm of‘Unfinished Sympathy’, the most striking thing about this album, 13 years on, is how urgent and dramatic it still sounds. The journey-time between ‘bold artistic breakthrough’ and ‘widely accessible lifestyle accoutrement’ has shortened considerably in the interim, but Massive Attack’s universally admired debut has made that trip without forgetting where it came from. With ex-Rip, Rig & Panic bigshot Neneh Cherry (whose boyfriend ‘Booga Bear’ - alias Cameron McVey - was the record’s executive producer) scoring a co-writer’s credit on ‘Hymn of the Big Wheel’, and a young Enterprise Allowance whippersnapper called Geoff Barrow (later one half of Portishead) working as studio tape-op, it’s easy to see how Blue Lines has acquired it...