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.
