Out of all the classic trip hop albums Massive Attack released during the nineties, this is probably the lesser of the three -- my minor grudge is mostly directed at the instrumentals featuring piano performer Craig Armstrong (who was somewhat trendy in Britain at the time, but has since faded into oblivion, at least as far as I know). Those cuts verge a little too much on elevator music for my taste, sapping some of the momentum found elsewhere in the album. The thing is, the floors you explore once you get out of those lifts are *all* fascinating. It's like roaming inside the cold and somewhat dilapidated corridors of a business building late at night, crossing the paths of all sorts of ghosts and spectres. One is Nicolette, lending her Billie Holiday-adjacent voice to the eerie "Three" and the lush neo-psychedelic, string-laden tones of "Sly". Another is an elderly Jamaican following your unsure steps as you cross empty rooms in the sound of "Spying Glass" -- doesn't he exactly look (and sound) like legendary reggaeman and dub prophet Horace Andy? And then at some point, you feel like you're gonna get mugged by a young ruffian with a burly mug named Tricky, with 3D and Daddy G looking at the scene with an approving look on their faces. "Eurochild" is hypnotic and trippy, but it's on the ominous and iconic "Karmacoma" that Tricky sounds the most menacing, in spite (or maybe because) of his hushed vocals... The most impressive ghost, however, is Everything But The Girl's Tracey Thorn. Her ethereal yet precise presence irradiates the minimalistic "Better Things". And most of all, it transcends the legendary opener "Protection", eight minutes of sheer beauty and incredible musicality -- slow yet hard-sounding hip hop beats, a simple funk guitar loop and an ominous, obsessive, one note-bassline all caressed by Tracey's motherly vocals and soothing layers of keyboards piling up on one another. That cinematic title-track is pure magic, and in that particular realm often explored by 3D, Daddy G and Mushroom, only "Teardrop" featuring Liz Fraser, from follow-up album *Mezzanine*, can be deemed superior. Oh, of course, you also have that controversial cover of The Doors' "Light My Fire", also with Horace Andy. I always thought it was only a tongue-in-cheek joke to close the proceedings. My only real issue with the last leg of the album is mostly that not much happens after "Sly" (the second instrumental featuring Craig Armstrong which follows it is more boring than that goofy version of "Light My Fire". The latter elicits some snarling emotional response on my part, at least. Given what I've just written, I could have easily gone to a 4/5 grade here. But the peaks on *Protection* are so damn high that I can forgive its two or three valleys. It's been such a nice ride in that haunted glass tower anyway. It's gonna be a 4.5/5 for the purposes of this list of essential albums, then, rounded up to 5. Which translates to a 9.5/10 for more general purposes (5 + 4.5) Number of albums left to review: 3 (plus the 80-ish extra LPs listed on this app, included because different past versions of the book have mentioned albums that have since been dropped in subsequent editions) Number of albums from the list I find relevant enough to be mandatory listens: 430 (including this one) Albums from the list I *might* include in mine later on: 255 Albums from the list I won't include in mine: 315