Massive Attack v Adam Curtis – Reviewed
A hotly-anticipated highlight of this year’s Manchester International Festival, Mikey Stevenson was on hand for Massive Attack v Adam Curtis…
In a disused train depot, we are surrounded on three-sides with huge translucent screens “enveloping us in a thin two-dimensional version of the past”. It looks like we’ve turned up for the ‘3 minutes hate’. It won’t be the final dystopian vision slung our way by Manchester International Festival’s Massive Attack v Adam Curtis.
This is Massive Attack’s first show in more than 3 years and a lack of information in the lead up to the event, coupled with reputation built from Curtis’ last show for Manchester International Festival (2009’s It Felt Like a Kiss) and the dark nature of creative outputs from both parties, leads to an edgy excitement… if not exactly a party atmosphere. As one friend said to me before the show: “we’re probably going to be found huddled in the corner rocking back and forth by the end of this.”
I’m a big fan of Adam Curtis’ films and the finished article owes a great deal to Curtis’ painstaking study of the BBC archives; hours spent mining through raw videotape, shot at globally significant events, quirky test footage, exterior scenes, celebrity interviews and cutting-room floor clips alike. The BBC archive is arranged chronologically, a system that has allowed Curtis to observe interesting patterns, startling parallels and contradictions as he moves through the television era.
Consisting largely of previously un-aired footage, the archives provide insights that would not have seemed significant at the time, but are relevant in the context of the era we live in today. A 10 second clip of Kurt Cobain, wandering lonely around the set of MTV’s Unplugged in New York, looking mildly awkward and absent-minded, blows away the rock-star myth the moment you recognize him. The footage was never intended for public viewing, but Curtis’ skill is in allowing the audience’s feelings to enter into the story.
Using such examples, he underlines one of the event’s key messages – that we have become haunted by distorted images of the past and these images have come to limit our imagination and dominate our psyche.
The visuals are delivered in trademark style: his well-spoken, authoritative voice-over and bold captions are familiar and welcome elements. The clips are sometimes chaotic and even by Curtis’ own standards the story is fragmented to extremes that seem mind-bendingly shaky. The audience isn’t so much drip-fed, but overloaded by a rapid succession of disparate images that come together very slowly to create an extremely warped, yet familiar tale. The overall feel is some sort of media orgy, more Brave New World than Nineteen Eighty-Four.
The shots are at turns crisp and grainy; the subject matter occasionally beautiful but frequently disturbing. As the night unfolds, the images begin to lose their repetitive pattern and break down; there is incoherence and contradiction. The trademark titles appear in pieces at opposite ends of the space. A voice is heard saying: “First thing I do when I wake up is check the news, check my phone, make sure I haven’t missed anything.”
And Massive Attack? They start, stop, speed up, slow down, mid-verse, mid-bar, on odd beats, finishing/starting quietly, gigantically, employing many clever and dramatic twists to match the expanse of images. These quick shifts are a testament to their tremendous skill and experience, but also to their willingness and determination to do the project well.
Other, more egocentric bands would not work so hard in what feels very much like a supporting role, especially with the cavernous space of Mayfield Depot providing additional challenges: a big, sterile void full of echoes might be atmospheric, but it isn’t good for dramatic stops and starts.
The event, happening, whatever we’re to call it, felt very much like an Adam Curtis documentary, rather than a Massive Attack gig, much to the confusion of some of the more inebriated audience members (for me, a highlight). Even the choice of soundtrack was very much in keeping with Adam Curtis’ previous documentaries: disparate and mismatched for dramatic and emotive effect.
While it’s a fun idea to include covers of The Archies and Barbra Streisand, alongside the more well-suited covers of Burial and Suicide tracks, it doesn’t necessarily play to Massive Attack’s strengths. Massive Attack do deserve praise for being daring, much more than if they had played a greatest hits set, but in the stake of Massive Attack v Adam Curtis, Adam definitely won.
Mikey Stevenson
Image courtesy James Medcraft
Manchester International Festival continues until 21st July
