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Del Naja brings strobes, beats to Chi-Town |
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Written by MOSCOW / Photos by BARRY BRECHEISEN
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Wednesday, 04 October 2006 |
The building blowing up on the way to the show is quite an astonishing way to begin things….long story. The Riviera contained a mature crowd, which although heavily sedated moved quickly amongst irritated "Ditka" security guards shining flashlights and screaming for no reason at all. The bartender, reminiscent of a childhood best friends mother took special care in patiently mixing the alcohol, and sending her customers off to play.
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Massive Attack
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 Entertainment
 Art
Riviera Theater
Chicago, Ill.
September 27, 2006
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Some sort of breathing apparatus may be necessary in order to avoid inhaling random body odors because of he proximity of which you are forced to rub against every person in the pit. All the while you have to be on the look out for flailing nose-hairs, and long toed shoes that wrap you up and cause drinks to be spilled all over some arrogant vixens dress. They look at you angrily for interrupting their standing as you pass searching for a place of your own, to no avail.
In pure darkness Massive Attack appears, Robert Del Naja or "3D" hovers to the microphone wearing a hotel-concierge uniform with golden rimmed sleeves and short hair. The lack of overhead lighting leaves the band covered in the colors beaming from the wall of lights bathing the back of the stage. Spoons should’ve been disbursed to protect from tongue swallowing seizures, more lights and strobes than a million suburban police cars all concentrated on a small stage.
Massive Attack has been part of several mainstream productions recently, and the music they produce is so theatrical it is very difficult to stand motionless and enjoy it, yet the majority of the crowd did just that. The zombified group stood in awe of the sensory display cascading across their faces. Some did move. Some shook in the millimeters of space they fought for, most ingested clouds of thick marijuana smoke, and created their own film to score the music to. The river of guitar across levels of synthetic sounds soothes the most paranoid.
"Teardrop" was frustrating only because the angelic voice of Liz Fraser was consumed by the high level of bass, in fact all vocals were overrun by the low end; however this did not detract that much from the overall performance. Her outfit was out of the UPS catalog, very puffy like packaging material. One of the crowd favorites "Unfinished Sympathy" placed everyone into a cocoon of sound and sent them to Jupiter via the "2001" express. "Inertia Creeps" a song about Del Naja's experiences in Istanbul delivered tense emotions mixed with the impending worry about the state of the world today.
Quite an extraordinary performance, one odd thing was the stiff arm shadow boxing of Del Naja whenever the music really started to take off, quintessentially European in ever aspect. A highlight of the night was a song with a name no-one could recall, in which the devastating statistics of this "War" we find ourselves in were flashed across the screens larger than life in a blatant display of the political ideals of the band. The lyrics, although hard to understand were lingerie in contrast to the horrifying numbers of dead cast across the stage. Three long encores exemplified how crowd friendly this Attack is.
They may be hidden in the soundtracks of network television, and movies like "Unleashed" but they still hold true to themselves and put on quite of show for those of us who enjoy sitting back and letting our heads do the dancing. |
your mom
Written by Guest on 2006-10-20 17:15:43
moscow should know. he's an expert on a million suburban police cars.  |
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