Students of music's evolution were quick to dig up the bones of Massive Attack's 1991 debut album Blue Lines and label them the earliest specimen of trip-hop.
Those who witnessed the Bristol-based collective's sets as The Wild Bunch sound system in the mid-'80s would likely point to those performances, and a few recordings, as even earlier examples of the form.
As is the way with these things, the process was more by mutation than invention. The British city's multicultural mix had fostered a club scene that drew as much on soul, jazz, electronic music and Jamaican dub as it did on American hip-hop, producing dance music with a laidback nocturnal vibe and elongated tail.
The Wild Bunch's own mutation into Massive Attack was encouraged along and financed by Neneh Cherry, who herself had achieved success early in the decade blending hip-hop with other influences.
Parts of Blue Lines were recorded at her house, and her Cherry Bear Organisation would nurture another Bristol trip-hop act, Portishead.
The album brings the Massive Attack nucleus of rapper Robert ''3D'' Del Naja and DJs Grantley ''Daddy G'' Marshall and Andy ''Mushroom'' Vowles together with a trio of distinctive voices: soul diva Shara Nelson, roots-reggae singer-songwriter Horace Andy and rapper Adrian ''Tricky Kid'' Thaws (later shortened to ''Tricky'').
This three-pronged vocal front, supplemented by the flat sprechgesang (spoken singing) rapping of 3D and Daddy G and additional vocals by Tony Bryan and Claude ''Wee Willie'' Williams, gives Blue Lines its breadth, mixing Nelson's smooth and soulful dance numbers with dub-influenced tracks, chilled breakbeats and restrained reggae grooves.
The album fringes the sinister territory that subsequent albums Protection and Mezzanine inhabit but is overall a lighter affair, even in tempo and easy on the ear. In Safe From Harm and Unfinished Symphony, both fronted by Nelson, the band delivers the attention-grabbing singles that will fund the next phase of trip-hop's evolution.
