1736 days between album releases and roughly the same hiatus from touring. It was with unbridled anticipation, that I awaited the arrival in Sydney of Massive Attack (MA), as I was lucky enough to see them twice on their last tour.
Hailing from Bristol, England (51N27, 2W35) home of Portishead, Dynamo Productions, Tricky and Nick Warren (Nick ‘cut his teeth’ with MA in the early 90’s as their ‘tour dj’ in the same capacity as Andy Smith is for Portishead), Massive Attack have had a long career starting as the Wild Bunch DJ Sound System and enjoying varied commercial success, but always maintaing an unwavering underground support.
The audience was a wide and varied group ranging from young club heads, hip-hoppers thru to some straight up and down mum and dad types attesting to the rise in popularity of down-tempo thoughtful music. 
My only disappointment of the evening was the opening by Daniel-San (dj set) not ‘Koolism’ as advertised. The sound for Daniel-San’s set was, at best half hearted and this was reflected in his performance, this is not the sort of set I have come to expect from one of Australia’s finest. But I can understand how intimidating it would have been going from 500 capacity clubs to opening for MA in a 12,000+ venue, with lack luster sound and most ticket-holders being ‘fashionably late’. Despite all of this Daniel-San still flexed with his track selection, brilliant as always. 
With a small red-cursor blipping on-screen, the band took the stage and set about taking us on a journey from ‘100th Window’ through their catalogue and back again minus anything from their 95’ album ‘Protection’. Opening with ‘Future Proof’ from the new album, the band consisting of drums, bass, keys and guitar, was well rehearsed and spot-on with their performances. Robert Del Naja’s (aka. 3D) vocals were as sharp onstage, as on their albums, leading and accompanying with surprise (to me!) guest Horace Andy, Daddy G and two female vocalists Dot Allison (amazing effort on ‘teardrop’) and Deborah Miller (whose overall performance was outstanding) they were also joined mid-way through the show by a violinist (with a synth type modification) which added yet another layer of intensity to the melancholy fabric of the MA sound. The band shone in respect to versatility and precision from playing fatback hiphop beats to their all-stops-out finale, which was a heavy rock-bolstered jam. 
The overall sound and mix of the show was outstanding even for the clinical and usually disappointing Sydney Entertainment Centre. The speakers were not the ‘normal’ stacks seen at the usual Ent Cent shows. They were the new JBL ‘half-height’ cabinets and they delivered with power, clarity and didn’t inhibit the subtlety of the band’s dynamics, they didn’t overshadow the stage at all, and were hardly noticeable
The stage-set and production were fantastic, with large trusses of intelligent lighting, framing a screen which became the visual backdrop to the band. The show was visually themed with a cacophony of live stats, live airline landing times, web garbage, aeronautical charts, binary code, raw html/java code and the added local touch of Sydney metro bus, train and ferry timetables and maps presented in their own form of digitized text, all of broadcast quality which integrated perfectly into the show, giving a personalized feel to the performance, I was extremely impressed with all of this ‘customization’ of the show to the city of Sydney.
The evening’s highlights for me were the stirring renditions of ‘Unfinished Sympathy’ and ‘Hymn Of The Big Wheel’
It’s bands like Massive Attack that have taken on, and succeeded in merging acoustic music, with electronic production and the demands of a modern diverse audience who demand a live ‘show’ not just a live ‘band’ and they delivered in every aspect of this, I just hope I don’t have to wait another five years to see them again.
Check out ITM’s photo galleries of the concert here
