Info → 100th Window Tour (2003-2004)                    

Isaac Hayes, whose 1970 song “Our Day Will Come” was heavily sampled on Exchange.

Isaac Hayes, whose 1970 song “Our Day Will Come” was heavily sampled on Exchange.

Typical Setlist Of 2003 Tour

Total Shows Played In 2003: 72

Duration Of 2003 Tour: 11th March - 28th August

Total Shows Played In 2004: 29

Duration Of 2004 Tour: 22nd May - 22nd August

Up until the end of April 2003, the setlist did not includeKarmacoma, as the LED visuals (showing the different cities across the world where Massive Attack were due to play in 2003) to accompany it had not been completed. Both Butterfly Caught,Special Cases and Black Melt were played continuously during the first half of the tour but gradually saw less and less appearances live, until the end of the 2003 tour where they were both omitted entirely. Also, festival dates cut down on the typical setlist listed below, down to 12/13 songs, with Everywhen and Name Takennearly always getting the cut for these shows. There were also usually encore breaks of roughly a minute each after Safe From Harm and Antistar.

Click on the song titles in the setlist below to go straight to the Live Appearances paragraph regarding these songs in the Song Info section. The songs denoted with a * are the songs that changed the most frequently on the setlists during the 2003 shows.

01. Future Proof

02. Everywhen *

03. Risingson

04. Black Melt *

05. Angel

06. Special Cases *

07. Karmacoma *

08. Butterfly Caught *

09. Name Taken

10. Teardrop

11. Mezzanine

12. Hymn Of The Big Wheel

13. Safe From Harm

14. Inertia Creeps

15. Antistar

16. Unfinished Sympathy

17. Group Four

Typical Setlist Of 2004 Tour

I Against I was played once and once only on this tour at the Brixton Academy show in London, UK on the 9th July. Immediately after this date, Antistar was dropped for the majority of the rest of the tour. Speed Of Dark was and still is an unreleased song that was debuted and played throughout the 2004 tour. For a little more information on this song, please refer to it’s sister track, United Snakes, which was also played on the first few dates of 2004 tour on the South American leg (as “Bullet”), but then quickly dropped and never played again.

Click on the song titles in the setlist below to go straight to the Live Appearances paragraph regarding these songs in the Song Info section. The songs denoted with a * are the songs that changed the most frequently on the setlists during the 2003 shows.

01. Angel

02. Risingson

03. Black Melt

04. Spying Glass

05. Karmacoma

06. Speed Of Dark

07. Teardrop

08. Mezzanine

09. Hymn Of The Big Wheel

10. Antistar *

11. I Against I *

12. Safe From Harm

13. Inertia Creeps

14. Unfinished Sympathy

15. Future Proof (Redux)

Additional Info

The theme for the 100th Window tour was put quite succinctly by UVA (United Visual Artists), the visual art installation company behind the visuals for the tour by saying, Quote – “From the very smallest (atoms and molecules) to the very largest (star constellations), the show explored digital representations of information, filtering real-time news, stock-market prices, weapon shopping lists, spam emails, virus alerts and weather reports to create a ‘picture of now’ translated into 36 languages, all perfectly synchronised to the band’s computers. Our first project, and the model for the ones that followed”. The 100th Window tour was the very first live tour for any band UVA had been tasked with for providing the visuals to. They would later go on to supply visuals for tours for U2, Chemical Brothers, Basement Jaxx and U.N.K.L.E, as well as subsequent Massive Attack tours, after the major success of the 100th Window tour. Apart from tours, UVA also do art installations as well as evidenced by the Volume installation which had a Massive Attack connection.

Many of the ideas behind the visuals came from not only 3D himself, but other well-known visual artists such as Marc Quinn, Nick Knight and Tatsou Miyamija. These ideas included same day localised newsfeeds tailored to the country Massive Attack were playing live in at the time (Future Proof and Antistar), showing a revolving map of world detailing all the dates Massive Attack had played and had yet to play (Karmacoma), up to the minute stock data from around the world’s currency exchanges (Butterfly Caught), statistics on the 2003 American occupation of Iraq (Risingson) and the current expenditure of different countries around the world on weapons of mass destruction (Safe From Harm). What made all this even more impressive was that all this data was translated into the local language of whatever country Massive Attack happened to be in at the time.

Another important part of the 2003 tour, that was well-publicized and has yet to be incorporated again into subsequent Massive Attack tours, was that fans could send short messages for any specific show on the tour via a special website (100thwindow.com) and these messages would get displayed on the giant LED screen at the show, usually at the very end during Group Four. This was possible through a close collaboration between UVA and Hi-Res!, the designers and developers of the official Massive Attack website. To capture all these fantastic images from the shows, a professional photographer was hired to accompany the band around the world documenting everything in photos which were them uploaded to the official website. The photographer’s name was Annabelle Dalby and you can check out her portfolio website here.

The only unfortunate consequence of having such a spectacular visual show, was that the giant LED screen made the 100th window economically unfeasible for Massive Attack to take it over and tour North America, which disappointed many fans over there at the time. 3D commented on this by saying Quote – “A SHAME BOUT AMERICA AND CANADA-TOO EXPENSIVE TO TAKE THE 100TH PRODUCTION CONCEPT OVER-INSTANT BANCRUPCY-GONNA TRY A REDUCED CONCEPT NEXT SUMMER-MORE EXPERIMENTAL AUDIO AND VISUAL-ON SMALLER SCREENS-MAYBE LCD-MORE FUCKING AROUND ON STAGE -LESS OF A GRAND SHOW.MAYBE WE CAN DO US/CANADA/S.AMERICA THEN.” [Official Massive Attack Forum – October 2003]

Indeed, Massive Attack would take the 100th Window tour over to the American continent the following year, but only in South America, making the unusual decision to neglect North America (who would not get a tour until theCollected tour in 2006). The lighting backdrops and production values afforded for this small South American leg of the 2004 tour were limited. This fact is noticeable upon examining any photos from these dates, by discovering that the LED screen devised by UVA for the 2004 tour was absent for these five South American dates. Instead just simple backlighting and coloured spotlights were used instead. The LED screen for the 2004 tour (which was also different from the screen employed on the 2003 tour), would not make it’s first appearance until the first of the European dates which was at the Super Rock Festival in Lisbon, Portugal on the 14th June.

The 2004 part of the 100th Window tour was a reduced version of the same basic concept of the 2003 tour, partly in order to reduce the cost of the giant LED screen of the preceeding year. Once again from UVA Quote –“Rejecting conventional rock-star lighting, the band opted to be silhouetted by a more focused, distilled version of the 2003 show. Relying less on text and information, and more on abstract imagery, this ‘greatest hits’ festival touring show was built for speed and convenience, mining the fertile ‘middle ground’ between lighting and video”. Another major difference between the 2003 and 2004 variations of this tour was that the 2004 tour was mostly confined to just festival dates, with no indoor Massive Attack-only shows except for two once-off shows held at the Brixton Academy in London, UK.

After finishing up the 100th Window tour at the V Festival on 22nd August 2004, Massive Attack would make a brief return to the stage as part of the special “Tsunami: Crisis In Asia” fund-raisers at the Bristol Academy in February 2005, before making their formal live return as part of the Collected tour at the Paramount Theater in Seattle, USA in April 2006.

Vocalists

3D: Provided vocals on the songs Future Proof, Risingson,Butterfly Caught, Mezzanine, Safe From Harm, Inertia Creeps, Antistar and Group Four. Apart from vocals, 3D also used a small sampling machine attached to a small pedestal beside his microphone to sample his own vocals live and trigger some song samples.

Daddy G: Provided vocals on Risingson, Karmacoma andMezzanine. This was also the first tour where Daddy G did not have any ‘DJ’ duties to perform on stage.

Horace Andy: Provided vocals on Everywhen, Angel, Name Taken and Hymn Of The Big Wheel.

Dot Allison: Provided vocals on Black Melt, Special Cases, Teardrop and Group Four. Apart from vocals, Dot also played the electric guitar during Black Melt and Group Four.

Deborah Miller: Provided vocals on Hymn Of The Big Big Wheel, Safe From Harm and Unfinished Sympathy. Apart from vocals, Deborah also played the tambourine onUnfinished Sympathy during it’s climax. She was noticeably absent during the 2004 tour, instead being replaced by Hazel Fernandez. The 2004 tour has been the only tour Deborah has not been apart of since Massive Attack started touring in 1995.Hazel Fernandez: Provided vocals on Hymn Of The Big Big Wheel, Safe From Harm and Unfinished Sympathy on the 2004 tour, substituting for Deborah Miller who for unknown reasons was absent for the tour this year. She has not toured with Massive Attack before or afterwards and has become a touring member of Jamiroquai since.

Sinead O’Connor: Provided vocals on What Your Soul Sings, Special Cases and A Prayer For England. Sinead O’ Connor herself only did live vocals on this song a total of four times at shows in Glasgow and Manchester,UK during April 2003. All other live renditions of Special Cases feature Dot Allison substituting for Sinead O’ Connor’s absence.

Mos Def: Provided vocals on I Against I for one date only at the Brixton Academy in London, UK on 9th July 2004. This was a lucky occurrence as Mos Def was at the time filming his role in the film “The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy” at the same time in London and found the time to perform at the show.

Musicians

Angelo Bruschini: Angelo typically uses a Boss GT5 guitar as his main effects, plus a Ground Control Plus midi footswitch. Unfinished Sympathy is the only song were Angelo is absent from the stage as electric guitar is not required for this song.

Winston Blisset: Winston is the bass guitarist and used a footswitch controller, which is used for bringing in effects when needed or routing to a tuner. The amp his bass is attached to is a 600 watt head and the spare is a 350 head, both of which are made by Boogie.

Andrew Smalls: Andrew provides the drums and percussive elements to the live tracks. He used Yamaha electric pads along with a number of Emu samplers triggering specific loops which had been cut up into elements.

Arden Hart: Arden uses an array of keyboards and synthesizers including a Korg Trinity, Yamaha Electric Piano, Access Virus 3, Yamaha 01v desk, Akai Z8 sampler and an S5000. One of his main roles during a show, is to trigger album sounds and samples which are too complex to re-produce live on stage. Arden also sings a couple of backing vocal parts on Risingson and a few other songs as well.

Lucy Wilkins: Provided violin on the songs, Special Cases,Butterfly Caught, Antistar and Unfinished Sympathy. On the 2004 leg of 100th Window, Lucy wa dropped from the touring setup, with any violin elements been sampled/triggered by Arden. She is now working and touring with Dot Allison whom she met on this tour.

Proshot Footage Links