Karmacoma...(8/7)

I would say this is one of the best performances I have ever seen in recent years. If it was not that the vocal performance of 3D was not as perfectly as expected, I would rate this a full-score gig! After close to two decades, I finally got a chance to watch their live. When the group came out as the leading figure of the trip hop movement in the mid 90’s, no one could have imagined how their music would transform powerfully to become totally organic and stardom-rock electronica. Massive Attack played 2 hours in the Montreux Jazz Festival, and while I never configure how their music is categorised as jazz, their 6+ music performers on the stage elaborated the energetic percussion-founded root in their music journey since last decade. With 2 full sets of percussion on both sides of the stage, the show was a transformation of modernised interpretation of trip hop or drum and bass. The stage design and the stage lighting were gorgeous. The visual projection signified the humanitarian message of the music group in their works, and the intensity of world messages Massive Attack brought in front of the stage crucified the world of ignorance…

The joy of listening Massive Attack’s live also came from the re-arrangement of the synthesis of their songs. Ranging from the lively groove bassline, the banging drum hits to the murmuring vocal combination, the live interpretation of Massive Attack’s music world was fully backed with a rich spectrum of instrument sounds and it was truly another level of music journey. The flashing lighting or the visually-loaded messages in words and numbers were a live protest to current politics and human security. When the group played teardrops in front of a silhouette vision of eye, the vivid sound just matched the innocent sense of the hollowing big eye on the stage. It was when a metamorphic release of light beams scattering all over the stage that dignified the world of teardrops. Featuring Martina Topley Bird, Massive Attack also played their unreleased song of invade me. Horace Andy was another star on the stage during the performance. His signature voice simply invaded the music hall! He brought the angel and the spittling atoms into the eardrum divinely. Massive Attack also performed the anthem Karmacoma in the encore session, and the evergreen trip hop classic was a perfect reply to Martina’s Overcome.