Massive Attack and Billboard Top 100

For a band so in myth and mystery is a wonderful producer Daddy G Massive Attack also has a cell phone.

This is even bigger shock to find that in contrast to his band, dark, uncompromising music of the man himself is friendly, polite and above all self-deprecating. Whistle through his  Breakup Songs influence with the recent enthusiasm of the people Daddy G from Massive Attack have Billboard Top 100 managed to rope in the support band's new album - the first in six years.

The band's music has always gone hand in hand with time. Massive Attack reflected the unease of a Thatcher government in Great Britain, before he returns to the love of Britpop inch

The following decade saw wealthy Massive Attack will be 3D through lineup changes, with '100th Window 'is primarily a solo album. However, with Daddy G worked again in the lap of the band of exciting new material, inspired by new innovations and a heavy bass sound Billboard Top 100 system, anger at the way the world's poor and vulnerable are treated.

With the new Massive Attack "Splitting The Atom" EP this week (October 5) clash music sat down with Daddy G to figure out what the band were up to ...

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Where did "Splitting The Atom title '?

There is only one reference to the fact that D splitting us. The way we moved and  Billboard Top 100 brought our ideas since our incarnation as The Wild Bunch, Massive Attack, and then how things are divided by the main source. The people have moved away, we divide Country Songs into two factions - it's just a metaphor for how we work.

Do you think you are refining your ideas as you go?

Yeah. We have the idea that we as a DJ combo that was Wild Bunch thing that we were an army of five men and unfortunately now it is down to two men. Some groups have blown away, and showed us how Tricky, some have come into play to the central vision that Massive Attack have to concentrate. We had people come and go, we have gained energy and lost energy.

Massive Attack and Country Songs

We had left Massive Attack in 2003 on the funeral '100th Window ', thinking almost the imminent end of the project. Offering himself a renaissance Country Songs , the pioneers of trip-hop music show they have not yet exhausted the resources of their art with 'Heligoland', a new  Billboard Top 100  album and carnal dreams.


Collective variable geometry in operation since 1988, Massive Attack is one of the key figures of the electronic alternative, beginning at the time of grunge revolution in the approach to the composition and mixing. The major impact of a multidisciplinary culture including DJing as well as graphics, then allows unprecedented bridges between genres. The reconciliation between hip-hop, rock and lyrical atmosphere is quickly becoming the hallmark of the group's flagship bristolien 1990s that continues to be imitated and plagiarized. Having overcome various personal and business disputes and a suffocating media coverage following the triumph of 'Mezzanine', Massive Attack now offers what may be its hard sum. In lieu of therapy or exorcism, 'Heligoland' is a serene look on past achievements while  Country Songs looking towards the future. The desire for consistency associated with the excitement of the unknown. An impression of fire roaring under the ice, as likes to point out the cerebral Robert Del Naja, aka 3D, met to celebrate the release of the album.

Read Review of 'Heligoland'

'Heligoland' is the fifth album by Massive Attack in twenty-year career. The music is up for you a matter of patience?


It would be more than one kind of unexpected last-minute rush, a sense of  Breakup Songs urgency that arises without warning after long periods of dead calm. The scene of Bristol, from which we come Daddy G and I, was built on this principle. The desires of each randomly emerge and eventually align to give us the impetus to develop together. All our albums are Country Songs  designed and experienced as the official conclusion, the concrete result of a phase point of joint creation. This mode of operation I feel personally about. It's always a tragedy to have to start from scratch once we got to the studio to reflect on the next drive, but turn the page and is primarily a real issue.

Breakup Songs of Massive Attack

Massive Attack DJ Robert "3D" Del Naja ("D") and Grant "Daddy G" Marshall ("G") has earned a reputation in the early phase of her career when she began work on their  Breakup Songs not-just-fifth title album had to scrounge around for commercials and guest remixers. They came in droves.

If they were not able to use all the artists have worked, trip-hop a lot of tricks up their sleeves ancestors. In preparation for the album release in February, today their first new Country Songs material in three years in the form of a preview remix EP called nuclear fission (on 6 October on EMI / Virgin). Lyrically, the theme song of the former schism reflects the trio shortly after the 1998 Mezzanine and 100th Window during the sessions. The distribution of nuclear features   Billboard Top 100  long-time collaborator Horace Andy, Tunde Adebimpe TV on the Radio Guide, Tricky muse Martina Topley-Bird, Guy Garvey, Elbow, remixer and hot, Van Rivers & The Subliminal Kid and Christoff Berg.

Speaking outside the couple renovated recently moody Bristol study, Marshall had this to say on the subject of  Breakup Songs the new EP: "Basically it's the things in black and white and the way we approach things in life look when it is an argument, a conversation or build something, there's a crack in the time This is the kind of things that make our lives ".. What's wrong with Del Naja X-ray-like Cover spliting the atom. (A lot like his performances of works of art of war from his gallery recently recall in the United Kingdom or the reporting Shops for war, in 2007 the full length of  Breakup Songs other passengers in the United Kingdom hoppers UNKLE).

During our conversation with the artist Massive Attack, that their decision to leave much of their love for a long time with the sampling, politics as usual in England, sift their plans for an experimental "drift" from their release, songs, and the meaning behind the words of the liquid Tunde Adebimpe sings on "Pray For Rain".

Massive Attack Interview

For a band so shrouded in myth and mystery it's a wonder Massive Attack producer Daddy G even owns a mobile phone.

It's an even bigger shock to find that contrary to his band's dark, uncompromising music the man himself is friendly, polite and above all self-deprecating. Whistling through his recent influences Daddy G enthuses about the people Massive Attack have managed to rope into assisting on the band's new album - their first in some six years.

The band's music has always gone hand in hand with the times. Massive Attack reflected the unease of Britain under a Thatcherite government before turning their back on the Britpop love in.

The affluent decade that followed saw Massive Attack drift through line up changes, with '100th Window' being primarily a 3D solo effort. However with Daddy G back in the fold the band have been working on exciting new material, fired up by new bass heavy soundsystem innovations and an anger at the way the world's poor and vulnerable have been treated.

Massive Attack - Paradice Circus

Interview with Massive Attack

Bristol, UK's Massive Attack have been making music for over a decade now. Starting out five years earlier as a sound system modeled after the ones in Jamaica, they were known as the Wild Bunch and had a club night in Bristol at the Dug Out which drew well with the local music fans. Eventually signed to Virgin in 1990, the core band of Grant Marshal (Daddy Gee), Robert Del Naja (3D) and Andrew Vowles (Mushroom) unleashed their debut album Blue Lines which became an instant classic. Starting with first single "Unfinished Sympathy" (they changed their name for this single to Massive due to the Gulf War being fought at the time), this brilliant Paul Oakenfold-remixed track was (and still is) regarded as one of the finest dance moment. Blue Lines to this day still stands up as a landmark recording; So much so, that Mixmag UK placed Blue Lines at #1 in thier Top 50 Dance Albums of All-Time last year. If not for anything else though, Blue Lines gave the world a first glimpse of future stars Shara Nelson and Tricky.





By the time Massive Attack came around to recording Protection, their second album, over a million copies of Blue Lines had already passed through stores the world over. But Protection didn't suffer from any sort of sophomore slump. Sans Tricky and Nelson the album had no problems in the creative department -- with tunes like "Sly," "Karmacoma" and the Tracey Thorn-sung title track, the band again turned heads for its intense artistry and depth. With fellow Bristolians Portishead also hitting at the same time, the two bands began to define the "Bristol Sound," also known as "trip hop." But Massive drew from so many music sources, it was hard to hold them to anything other than "brilliant."


Once people were able to grasp onto the second album's genius, the band let dub fiend the Mad Professor loose on the entire disc and released it as No Protection, essentially an 'in-dub' version of Protection. However unclassifiable the band was, they ammassed even more fans with that release and opened the doors for Mad Professor to gain the notariety that had escaped him for so many years prior.


Now back another four years later with Mezzanine, they are again set to turn on musical minds with a more textured, cohesive body of work. Working with former Cocteau Twins vocalist Liz Frasier on three songs, the band also re-enlist Horace Andy from Protection and a new singer Sara Jay who sings the sublime, almost alternative-leaning "Dissolved Girl" -- an album highlight. With the stakes even higher now that Bristol has given the world so many more popular artists [Way Out West, Roni Size] Massive have again met the challenge and come up trumps with another amazing work of art.


DMA recently chatted with band memeber Robert Del Naja (aka 3D) about a few things while he was waiting around the Virgin UK offices for a hot dinner date.


DMA: Massive Attack always have a knack for finding interesting voices for its albums. How do you go about finding these people for the records? Do you write tracks around their voices?

3D: Well, every track's different, you know what i mean...we've done so many tracks now that every experience is different. Depends on the person, the song, what the music was like when we contacted the singer, how developed the idea was...It really just depends, there's really no one way of it being done. Like for instance, if I'm working with Liz Frasier or if I'm working with Tracey Thorn, there's gonna be different dynamics every time. it's quite hard to find the process, every track's a different story really.


DMA: Do you write down a list of people you want to work with before you set out to do the album or do things just sort of 'happen'?





3D: We didn't write down a list...we've wanted to work with Liz Frasier for about five years now. We tried to get in touch with her but it didn't really work out the first time. As for Horace Andy...we've got a lot of admiration for him so we just wanted to work with him consistently, so we asked him back.




DMA: Your collaboration with Everything But The Girl's Tracey Thorn, "Protection" was absolutely brilliant. Did you attempt to bring her back for Mezzanine?

3D: Well, we did a track for Batman Returns soundtrack and we were going to do another film soundtrack thing, not for our album and we also asked her to write something for us maybe to see if it would work out. We never really went through with it though...it was just an idea.




DMA: Was there someone [a vocalist] you wanted to work with on Mezzanine who either refused or couldn't budget the time to the project to do it?

3D: Well we started writing something for the vocalist from Radiohead but communication was a bit difficult because we were busy and so were they so unfortunately it didn't happen. Maybe on the next record...




DMA: Maybe he'll turn out like Liz Frasier did...With so many different vocalists featured in your songs, how do you play the songs live seeing that it's probably impossible to take all the vocalists out? Do you use DATs of them or do you have someone else sing them?

3D: Sometimes we don't use the vocal at all. It depends. It would really piss off the audience if [they] went to go check out a band and the real lead singer didn't perform. In our case, because the show is the show, and you're getting a full hour and forty five minutes of music, you're not getting what exactly you heard on the albums. You're getting an experience -- you're getting some of the sounds and some the personality and some of the ideas, but translated into a live setting. A live show is one of those very subjective things where I've seen a gig and I've loved it and the person next to me has hated it. We've learned that you cannot please everyone, so we just do what pleases us and hope the crowd is with us.




DMA: Opinions are like assholes..

3D: (Laughs)...yeah, you could play a record one day and hate it, and then the next day think it's the greatest thing in the world. But with a record you have the luxury of playing it over and over again. With a gig its a one off, it really depends on how you feel at that particular point and what you drank, what you're having, how hot you are, whether you're hungry, someone's pissed you off that day and then you came to one of our shows expecting to see Shara Neslon sing "Unfinished Sympathy" they might be rather disappointed whereas someone expected something different and go 'wow! I really liked that!' Basically opinions differ and we know that.




DMA: Do think that Americans by and large understand the concept of Massive Attack and it's sound system-like approach to music?

3D: I'm not sure if America understands Massive Attack at all because it's a very mixed bunch of ideas. When we were the Wild Bunch, we used to play all sorts of music be it new wave, reggae, funk, soul, early garage, detroit techno...that's where we came from. I'm not sure if these camps work together in America like they would and do in England. As for aspirations We don't have any idea of how it's gonna go down in America. We know that when we played there we sold out our gigs the last time we toured and it was good fun and we met people who were fans, and also people who came out of curiosity. We do alright in America, but in Canada we do better; more faithful following. If you can't define what the music is directly, then it will never be easy for us to be marketed and sold as a proper band. It seems as though that sort of thing is very important to America by and large.


DMA: You guys hail from Bristol, which has slowly through the years become a musical hotbed. Do you feel like you guys were the pioneers of the scene or did you just 'open the doors' to the outside world to look in on what was going on there?




3D: I dont feel that were responsible for that, but we're not gonna deny that what we did opened the window and a few doors in Bristol. We're all different in our own way -- the only thing that really accociates all the different artists in Bristol is the fact that we all take our time when we work on musical projects. We all grew up listening to punk music and funk stuff and those attitudes sort of snuck into our music. That sort of brought people from different circles together and maybe it wasn't as 'cultural melting pot' as it all sounds but because Bristol is quite a small place, it becomes a lot more focused then.




Ooops, looks like 3D's date is in the waiting room...hope he had fun!!

Massive Attack's Mezzanine is out May 12th on Virgin Records America

Written 3/26/98

Originally posted by Jennifer Warner, reposted with permission.

Massive Attack - Live with me