The Standard's journalism is supported by our readers. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.
It is undisputed that Massive Attack are one of the greatest British acts of all time, but one of the reasons why that is the intent of it all. Politically-, socially-, environmentally-conscious, they’re not just ‘all about the music’, with none of that ‘we write this for ourselves and if anyone else likes it, it’s a bonus’.
Their day at the new LIDO festival is entirely battery-powered, a first for a London festival, and is part of their new decarbonisation initiative that’s surely going to change everything for eco-friendly events; something to please local park net curtain-twitchers, you’d think.
And while other artists fret about whether it’s their place to talk about Gaza, Massive Attack use their major summer show in the capital as a multi-media platform for demanding an end to the genocide.
The Palestine Solidarity Campaign are given the stage before the band come on to call for an end to the actions of the Israeli government, before the set itself is dominated by the footage on the giant screens, co-produced by documentary film-maker Adam Curtis, a long-term collaborator for the band’s live shows. There is harrowing footage of attacks, statistics of numbers killed, and faces of the dead. Palestine flags wave in the crowd as a giant one is displayed on screen.
Robert ‘3D’ Del Naja himself – wearing a combat-zone Press vest - throughout the set takes the mic to reference the situation, “children are not a target.”
And the music?
Well, the music is almost a soundtrack to the films on the screen, given the living hell depicted. You sense this is entirely the point, that the show is the medium for the message.
That’s probably how it should be right now, yet after a thrillingly brutal Risingson - 3D and Daddy G still utter icons of cool - there’s a solemnity to the occasion that stifles the thrills early on, Take It There and Future Proof merely holding the mood. Things shift upwards with The Cocteau Twins’ Elizabeth Fraser joining them for Black Milk and then a spiralling version of Tim Buckley’s Song to the Siren where her legendary voice startles even further, truly godlike as the world behind her crashes into rocks.
Horace Andy is another supernaturally gifted vocalist, and Angel is simply purity in action, and then there’s surprise appearance by Mos Def for I Against I, who wrestles with existence on a similar plain, it’s like seeing characters from Wings of Desire each delivering their takes on what they’ve seen of humanity.
Which paves the way then for Unfinished Sympathy, one of the greatest singles ever, and here a cannot-fail moment of unity behind vocalist Deborah Miller. Not a dry cheek under the glowering sky.
Teardrop closes things out with Elizabeth Fraser taking us all back into the womb and it feels like a collective moment of protection, or indeed a will to give it. In the end, the music delivered on the promise of the occasion but the power of the night came from thoughts of children starving and dying many miles away, and you feel that is what Massive Attack want above anything.
Read More
Lido Festival continues on June 13; lidofestival.co.uk