Coming out of a time when tensions among the group were high, it not only marked the end of an era for the band-who were torn apart by Mushroom’s departure and Daddy G’s so-called ‘sabbatical’-but it also pushed the limits of the band’s already saturnine sound. Mezzanine came six years later, and though it may have been Massive Attack’s third album, it was the band’s climax in more ways than one. “What we were trying to do was create dance music for the head, rather than the feet,” Daddy G told The Observer, and that’s exactly what they did. Their explosive debut Blue Lines, released a year later, took cues (as well as literal samples) from rock, soul, hip hop, reggae and dub to create dynamic electronica that continues to resist categoric definition. Experimenting with sample-heavy melodies and moody sprechgesang -vocal chants that oscillate between singing and spoken word-the band cultivated their genre-defining sound for 12 years before eventually being taken under the wing of Neneh Cherry in 1990, and signed to what later became Virgin Records. Born out of Bristol’s burgeoning music scene in the late ‘80s, the three-man band comprised graffiti artist-turned-rapper Robert Del Naja (known on-stage as 3D) and DJs Grantley Marshall (aka Daddy G) and Andrew Vowles (aka Mushroom). “By doing it slowly and anonymously, we can actually enjoy it,” the trio told Q Magazine back in 1991. A cult band never caught up in the cult of celebrity, Massive Attack enjoy a largely faceless level of fame, pre-social media, nestled within their niche, celebrated for the tenacity, integrity and ingenuity they poured into their distinctive sound. If you don’t know the story of Massive Attack, you’re not the only one.

Massive Attack in The Face, 1994, by Jean Baptiste Mondino But Mezzanine wasn’t monumental only for me, it was an epic explosion of trip hop electronica that cemented Massive Attack’s position among the masters.

Early in my teenage years it resurfaced, nostalgic, but also new-and it acted as my gateway into electronic music.

My affinity for this album doesn’t stem from our shared birth date, but it’s prolificacy in my existence-the soundtrack to long car journeys, the contents of my Dad’s iPod Classic, which would click as I traced the circle of its dial and scrolled through the album’s disquieting track titles-‘ Dissolved Girl’, ‘ Inertia Creeps’. Today, Massive Attack’s Mezzanine turns 21-the same day I, less remarkably, turn 25.

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