Kosher Eucharist / יוקאריסט כשר

In two years of college replete with an ever-mutating rogue’s gallery of drinkers, smokers, snorters, queens, Jews, Papists, naked Papists, Texans, naked Texans and malevolent force known only as “Reilly,” few heroes emerged. In fact, few people who could be relied upon to get through one meeting with visiting parents without crying, fighting someone or garnishing at least three sentences with the word “buttfucking” emerged.

But there was one hero. The rock around which our substance-addled eddies swirled, the Alice B. to our vodka-swilling Gertrude and Ernest, the bass player - the Minotaur. A backwards-hatted Italian square of jaw and torso, the Minotaur could drink and smoke all of us into a tear-soaked corner and still muster up more than enough fortitude to carry the ladies home. The Minotaur kissed girls on the hand and boys on the cheek and made it seem classy rather than Gallic. The Minotaur, armed with only a vintage teardrop-shaped Vox bass and a level gaze, mediated the many conflicts that inevitably arise when drummers are forced to provide beats for the Wicked, also known as lead singers.

The Minotaur’s room always - always - had candy.

And the Minotaur’s discerning taste led me to more than few discoveries in film, comics and music - among them one of my enduring favorites, dub-fiending Bristol trip-hoppers Massive Attack. We were relaxing in his room, ganja doubtless having been smoked, he put on “Karmacoma,” and I was hooked. So this Massive Attack-related post goes out to the Minotaur and all the Butterfinger, marijuana and gentlemanliness he represents.

I was recently discussing Massive Attack with Harry - specifically which of their albums is the most compelling, or in music geek’s terms, kicks the most ass. While we agreed that 100th Window wasn’t worth owning for anything beyond completeness’ sake, Harry favors the churning-rock-over-inky-electronica aesthetic of Mezzanine, whereas I could spin Blue Lines ten times in a row without growing tired of it. But the standard Massive Attack debates - whether Blue Lines or Mezzanine is the better album, whether the band is more at home in dub and soul or electronica and rock, whether No Protection, Mad Professor’s dub remix of Protection, actually exceeds its source album in quality - all overlook the secret weapon that makes every Massive Attack album worth multiple listens: reggae singer Horace Andy.

Massive Attack deserves boundless credit for both exposing Horace Andy beyond reggae aficionado circles and for sensing the darkness pulsing under many of Andy’s best 1970s Jamaican recordings and its applicability to trip-hop’s musical and cultural principles. Andy’s shuddering falsetto, as compelling today as it was in the early ’70s, invariably transforms the Massive Attack songs on which it appears into album highlights: the nervous “Spying Glass” from Protection, the breathtaking “Angel” off Mezzanine.

But as universally admired as Horace’s work with Massive Attack may be, his solo output still remains chiefly the domain of reggae cognoscenti, which is a tragedy. So Kosher Eucharist aims to rectify the situation both by exposing our (admittedly few) readers to a sampling of Andy’s classic records and by giving them an appreciation for how many of the Massive Attack tracks he appears on are direct covers or heavy quotations of his vintage originals. We’ll go in order of album:

The clattering dub-hop of Blue Lines’ “Five Man Army,” a precursor of sorts to the band’s most stunning track in this vein, “Karmacoma,” quotes from, count ‘em, three Horace Andy oldies: “Cuss Cuss,” “Money Money” and “Skylarking.”

Massive Attack - Five Man Army

Horace Andy - Cuss Cuss

Horace Andy - Money Money

Horace Andy - Skylarking

Protection’s “Spying Glass,” a melancholy lament about Babylon’s refusal to leave peace-loving Rastas alone, gives Horace Andy’s original a swirling remix without straying fundamentally from the source.

Massive Attack - Spying Glass

Horace Andy - Spying Glass

Which brings us to Mezzanine’s “Angel,” perhaps Massive Attack’s finest hour. Andy’s falsetto, never before sounding as chilling as it does here, lifts a pulsating, sinewy bassline into a gloriously apocalyptic midsection and then, with a mantra of “Love you love you love you love you” brings it right back round again. Without a doubt one of the finest recordings of the 1990s. But how many people know that the nucleus of “Angel” lies within a relatively innocuous Horace Andy song from the early 1970s, “You Are My Angel”? Well, now you do.

Massive Attack - Angel

Horace Andy - You Are My Angel

And here’s to hoping that the follow-up to 100th Window, rumored to once again feature Horace Andy and be slated for a 2007 release date, lives up to the promise of Blue Lines and Mezzanine.