Mezzanine

Released 20 April 1998 via Circa and Virgin, Mezzanine is Massive Attack's third album and their darkest, the bleak masterpiece that broke the group apart. Robert Del Naja conceived it in 1997 under the working title Damaged Goods and dragged it toward guitar, distortion and low-end pressure. Andrew Vowles, better known as Mushroom, wanted none of it ("Are we a fucking punk band now?"), and by the end the three were writing their parts separately at Christchurch Studios, with management booking a cottage in Cornwall as a second room to keep them apart. Mushroom pushed for Madonna to sing "Teardrop," which Grant Marshall, better known as Daddy G, called "an act of treachery." The album ran four months late while Del Naja and co-producer Neil Davidge tore tracks apart and rebuilt them. Mushroom left after the tour, and Mezzanine is the last album with him.

The samples are buried deep: The Velvet Underground under "Risingson," Isaac Hayes's "Our Day Will Come" under "Exchange," The Cure and Led Zeppelin's "When the Levee Breaks" under "Man Next Door," Manfred Mann's Earth Band under "Black Milk," and Turkish çiftetelli music Del Naja recorded in Istanbul inside "Inertia Creeps." The album plays as one continuous atmosphere: claustrophobic and paranoid, a late-night record best heard loud on headphones. Horace Andy sings "Angel" and "Man Next Door," floating over basslines that feel load-bearing. Elizabeth Fraser of Cocteau Twins carries "Teardrop," "Black Milk" and "Group Four," and Sarah Jay Hawley sings "Dissolved Girl."

The record sits closer to dub and post-punk than anything Bristol had produced before it. It entered the UK chart at No. 1 and became the group's biggest seller. "Teardrop" found a second life as the theme to House and has outlasted most of the trip-hop it came from. For its twentieth anniversary, Mezzanine became the first album encoded into synthetic DNA.

CD album, new and sealed.