Blue Lines


Blue Lines is the debut studio album by English electronic music group Massive Attack, released on 8 April 1991 by Wild Bunch and Virgin Records. A remastered version of the album was released on 19 November 2012.

Background

"We worked on Blue Lines for about eight months, with breaks for Christmas and the World Cup," said Robert "3D" Del Naja, "but we started out with a selection of ideas that were up to seven years old. Songs like 'Safe from Harm' and 'Lately' had been around for a while, from when we were The Wild Bunch, or from our time on the sound systems in Bristol. But the more we worked on them, the more we began to conceive new ideas too – like, 'Five Man Army' came together as a jam." The group also drew inspiration from concept albums in various genres by artists such as Pink Floyd, Public Image Ltd., Billy Cobham, Wally Badarou, Herbie Hancock and Isaac Hayes.
Daddy G said about the making of the album:
The font used on the cover of the album is Helvetica Black Oblique. Del Naja has acknowledged the influence of the inflammable material logo used on the cover of Stiff Little Fingers' album Inflammable Material.

Composition

Blue Lines featured breakbeats, sampling, and rapping on a number of tracks, but the design of the album differed from traditional hip hop. Massive Attack approached the American-born hip hop movement from an underground British perspective and also incorporated live instruments into the mixes. It features the vocals of Shara Nelson and Horace Andy, along with the rapping of Tricky Kid.
Blue Lines is generally considered the first trip hop album, although the term was not widely used before 1994. A fusion of electronic music, hip hop, dub, '70s soul and reggae, it established Massive Attack as one of the most innovative British bands of the 1990s and the founder of trip hop's Bristol Sound. Music critic Simon Reynolds stated that the album also marked a change in electronic/dance music, "a shift toward a more interior, meditational sound. The songs on Blue Lines run at 'spliff' tempos – from a mellow, moonwalking 90 beats per minute ... down to a positively torpid 67 bpm."

Reception

In a contemporary review of Blue Lines, Dele Fadele of NME hailed the album as "the sleekest, deadliest, most urbane, most confounding LP 1991 has yet seen", writing that Massive Attack "put current changes on the dancefloor in perspective and map out blueprints for what must surely come next" and that "after Blue Lines the boundaries separating soul, funk, reggae, house, classical, hip-hop and space-rock will be blurred forever." Selects Andrew Harrison similarly complimented the album's diverse mix of styles and called it "a record to transcend every boundary". Robert Christgau was more reserved in his praise, giving the album a three-star honorable mention, which indicated "an enjoyable effort consumers attuned to its overriding aesthetic or individual vision may well treasure". He cited "One Love" and "Be Thankful for What You've Got" as highlights and jokingly wrote, "from soul ii skank, those postindustrial blues got them down".
The album reached No. 13 on the UK Albums Chart; sales were limited elsewhere. Blue Lines proved to be popular in the club scene, as well as on college radio stations.
According to Acclaimed Music, a site which uses statistics to numerically represent critical reception, Blue Lines is the 37th best-received album of all time, and third best-received of the 1990s. In 1997, Blue Lines was named the 21st greatest album of all time in a "Music of the Millennium" poll conducted by HMV, Channel 4, The Guardian and Classic FM. The following year, Q readers placed it at number 58 in its list of the "100 Greatest Albums Ever", and in 2000, the album was voted at number 9 in the magazine's poll of the "100 Greatest British Albums Ever". In 2003, the album was ranked number 395 on Rolling Stones list of The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, and ranked 397 in a 2012 revised list. Pitchfork ranked it at number 85 in its list of "The Top 100 Albums of the 1990s". The album was also included in the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die. The track "Unfinished Sympathy" has also been singled out for praise, earning a BRIT Award nomination for the best single of 1991 and being hailed by BBC Music as "one of the most moving pieces of dance music ever, able to soften hearts and excite minds just as keenly as a ballad by Bacharach or a melody by McCartney."
"This album is chill music for me – music to write to," said author Chuck Palahniuk. "I'm writing short stories to this right now. I put this on repeat, something Andy Warhol used to do. He'd put singles on and play them unendingly to the point where the language would break down, and he would paint to that trance-like repetition."
As of 2010, sales in the United States have exceeded 266,000 copies, according to Nielsen SoundScan.

Track listing

;Sample credits
  1. "Safe from Harm"
  2. * Shara Nelson: vocals
  3. * Recorded at Coach House, Bristol
  4. * Mixed at Matrix, London
  5. * Mix engineer: Jeremy Allom
  6. "One Love"
  7. * Horace Andy: vocals
  8. * Recorded at Coach House, Bristol
  9. * Mixed at Konk Studios, London
  10. * Mix engineer: Bryan Chuck New
  11. "Blue Lines"
  12. * Massive Attack and Adrian "Tricky" Thaws: vocals
  13. * Recorded at Eastcote Studios, London
  14. * Engineer: Kevin Petri
  15. * Mix engineer: Jeremy Allom
  16. * Bass guitar: Paul Johnson
  17. "Be Thankful for What You've Got"
  18. * Tony Bryan: vocals
  19. * Recorded at Cherry Bear Studios
  20. * Mixed at Matrix, London
  21. * Mix engineer: Jeremy Allom
  22. "Five Man Army"
  23. * Massive Attack, Horace Andy, Adrian "Tricky" Thaws, and Claude "Willie Wee" Williams: vocals
  24. * Recorded at Eastcote Studios, London
  25. * Engineer: Kevin Petri
  26. * Mixed at Matrix, London
  27. * Mix engineer: Jeremy Allom
  28. "Unfinished Sympathy"
  29. * Shara Nelson: vocals
  30. * Recorded at Coach House, Bristol, and Abbey Road Studios, London
  31. * Strings engineer: Hayden
  32. * Mixed at Matrix, London
  33. * Mix engineer: Jeremy Allom
  34. * Strings arranged and conducted by Wil Malone
  35. * Leader: Gavyn Wright
  36. "Daydreaming"
  37. * Massive Attack, Adrian "Tricky" Thaws, and Shara Nelson: vocals
  38. * Recorded at Cherry Bear Studios
  39. * Mixed at Konk Studios and Roundhouse, London
  40. * Mix engineer: Jeremy Allom
  41. "Lately"
  42. * Shara Nelson: vocals
  43. * Recorded and mixed at Coach House, Bristol
  44. * Mix engineer: Bryan Chuck New
  45. "Hymn of the Big Wheel"
  46. * Horace Andy: vocals
  47. * Neneh Cherry: backing vocals, additional arrangement
  48. * Michael "Mikey General" Taylor : backing vocals
  49. * Recorded at Coach House, Bristol, and Hot Nights, London
  50. * Mixed at Matrix, London
  51. * Mix engineer: Jeremy Allom

    Charts

Certifications