9th July 2004 - Brixton Academy, London, UK
First five tracks were OK, antistar is a bit dull without the violinist. Bullet was very interesting, one of the instrumentals for the DTDOST. Digged parts of that. Teardrop. I was motionless but not because I felt moved. If someone has any ideas how we can get this off the setlist, particularly boycott ideas please let me know. [Also if someone could explain to me what the point of strumming the same chord randomly and undetectably on stage through many of the songs is, one would be very appreciative.] Mezzanine was enjoyable enough. Hymn of the Big Wheel was drummerless, strippe down, kinda worked I guess. SFH was nice as always but ending guitar flourish was disappointing just couldn’t hear it. On a geeky engineering level and perhaps on a keyboard level and maybe even on a guitar lack of loudnes level there was some issues I think. Also can’t for the life of me work out what D’s Kaoss thing actually does to change his voice, it just sounds the same to me. The special guest was Mos Def. This part was very good.
Inertia Creeps was very good, Unfinished coulda done with a violin and Deborah’s replacement isn’t quite Deborah. Future Proof Redux, a more sombre chilled out version of the original minus trademark bleeps, was nice in places, possibly a bit mystifying to the crowd as the final track but just my worthless opinion. D’s banter comments were to encourage people to not vote BNP (MA fans are notorious BNP supporters) and dedicating SFH to women and children of Iraq which was… apt. He thanked singers and fans etc etc Massive Attack doesn’t seem to work as well on a stripped down level. A lot of the tracks just seem to lack that extra zing of those lost elements. It was alright as a night but I would like MA to try even harder to get Elizabeth Fraser out of cyrogenics, might I suggest bribery. Also whatevers been done to upset or lose Deborah ought to be rectified really. The ’screen’ was good for the lighting aspect, but I found the text too hard to really read, I’m sure it related to cool stuff about Iraq and so forth but it beat me.
Review by EX from the Official Massive Attack Forum dated 10th July 2004
This show is the only time at which I Against I has been played live. It is also the only occasion that Mos Def has joined Massive Attack live on stage. This was a lucky occurence 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.
This show and the previous night also at Brixton Academy, were the only two shows of the 2004 tour, which were not festival dates.
After this date, Antistar was dropped from the setlist temporially and would not reappear until the 12th August at the Rock Oz’ Arènes Festival in Avenches, Switzerland.
A new song that debuted during the 2004 tour was Speed Of Dark, which featured vocals from Dot Allison for the early part of the tour, but then the vocals would be dropped turning the song into just an instrumental. Speed Of Dark would end up being played for the entirety of the 2004 tour. So far, this song has not been released on record and neither has it been played live since the 2004 tour.
The official site for the Brixton Academy is located here.
These photos were taken by Ex. Click on the thumbnails below to view a larger image.
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