Massive Attack | 1988 - Today | Trip-Hop
I/ Bristol Utopia Sound System
1. Tarzan High Priest
1941, Montego Bay, Jamaica. Four years before the birth of Bob Marley, Bunny Marrett is born in an effeverscent city. He grows up near the centre and the theatre where every activities take place, between calypso bands and street musicians. He sings with a band of his school in the middle of the fifties and, in 1958, travels to England to join his parents who arrived there three years before. Bunny lives in Wolverhampton (his parents being among the first Jamaicans to buy their own home in this part of England) and one day he discovers the city of Bristol while accompanying his friends who visit their families there. Love at first sight, Bristol feels like home. A few weeks later, the sound system (a collective of DJs and musicians) he's a part of moves from Wolverhampton to Bristol. Their name is Tarzan High Priest but soon they are called Studio 17, playing reggae and dub in this new city. Among the collective, Hector Thaws.
2. Bristol Kids
Hector Thaws has two sons, Rupert and Roy, both really involved in this sound system. In 1968, Roy Thaws and Maxin Quaye give birth to their son Adrian Thaws. Raised in Knwole West, Bristol, Adrian grows up in a difficult environment struggling with violence and drug use. In 1987, Adrian Thaws, called Tricky, joins another sound system created in 1982, the Wild Bunch, made of ex-punks and reggae fans. Here, he meets many people from Bristol, the young DJ Grant Marshall aka Daddy G who grew up in the same culture, when his parents arrived in England in the fifties from Barbados, the visionnary graffiti artist and rapper Robert Del Naja aka 3D, and two other DJs, Nellee Hooper and Andrew Vowles aka Mushroom. Later in the year, Hooper leaves Wild Bunch to focus on his own career (he'll later produce Björk's Debut, Madonna and U2). Other members of the sound collective decide to create their own band and, inspired by a groovy warehouse party in Bristolthey love, choose the name Massive Attack.
3. Anti-Dance
"The 90s were so saturated with raves and at that time people were getting really bored. And with us when we first started, we were like let's make some anti-dance music, [...] let's make something, not necessarily for people who came home from raves and needed something to listen to but it did kind of fill that void." This quote by Daddy G, alongside with the heavy influences from dub, hip-hop, house and acid jazz that were spreading among their town, gave birth to Massive Attack. 3D, Daddy G, Mushroom and Tricky release in 1988 their first song, Any Love, sung by Carlton McCarthy, the act of a birth of a sound that never existed before. Thanks to Neneh Cherry and her husband, Massive Attack released their first album Blue Linesin 1991, with singers Horace Andy and Shara Nelson. The song Unfinished Sympathy propels them to the forefront of the music scene, with this strange downtempo sound between dub, electronic and hip-hop.
4. Trip-Hop Is Born
Three years later, Massive Attack decide to team up with their longtime friend and producer Nellee Hooper, participating to the single Protection containing samples of James Brown and Bill Cosby. With the departure of Shara Nelson, Del Naja hires a new female singer, Everything But the Girls' Tracey Thorn, whose voice really help them craft the sound for their new brilliant album. The same year, Tricky decides to leave the band because he wants to do something on his own, a risky bet that allows him to release Maxinquaye in 1995. With Massive Attack, Tricky and Portishead's Dummy in 1994, all from Bristol, this new sound starts to grow till music journalist Andy Pemberton uses the word "trip-hop" to describe DJ Shadow's song "In/Flux" Honouring their dub influences, a remix version of Protection, No Protection is released in 1995 by dub-music producer Mad Professor.
5. The Beetle
If Massive Attack's fame is already unquestionable, the atmosphere within the group becomes tense. Neil Davidge enters as their new producer and works with every member separately. Among the different feuds, the choice for Teardrop's singer. Massive Attack recently worked with Madonna on the cover of Marvin Gaye's / Want You and Mushroom wants her back on Teardrop. But 3D prefers Cocteau Twins' Elizabeth Fraser. After all, she has this gothic background and that's the dark mood 3D wants on this record. Fraser finally enters the studio to record the song and asks everybody to leave her alone. Jeff Buckly recently died and the loss of her close friend deeply affects her. A few minutes later, the song is recorded and Teardrop becomes Massive Attack's most famous song, with this animatronic fetus music video that installs the band as exceptional visual artists. 3D's obsession with insects gives him the idea to draw the cover of Mezzanine, a name chosen to describe the band's position, always on the side, never fitting in.
6. New Shapes
If Mezzanine suddenly becomes a landmark in music history as well as Massive Attack's pinnacle, it also marks Mushroom's departure due to creative dissents in 1999, as well as Daddy G's in 2001, because of his newborn child he wants to spend time with. Left on his own, Del Naja starts working on new songs, enlists Sinead O'Connor and Horace Andy for lead vocals, and releases 100th Window in 2003. For the first time, the album doesn't feature any samples and, if still very good, is a bit of a let-down because of the monotonous production. During this time, Massive Attack records a song with Mos Def, I Against I, as well as the entire soundtrack of Louis Leterrier's Danny the Dog with Jet Li, featuring some really good songs. Daddy G comes back in the studio in 2005 even though nothing comes out of their sessions. They release a compilation in 2006, Collected, unmissable due to its B-Sides. This period also marks the beginning of Massive Attack's activism. In 2003, they pay for full-page advertisement against the Iraq war in NME, host a charity benifit for Palestinian children in 2007, and always speak up to defend Human rights.
7. Organic
Finally, in 2010 Massive Attack release their fifth album Heligoland, featuring numerous guest vocalist with Hope Sandoval, Martina Topley-Bird, Horace Andy, Damon Albarn and Elbow's Guy Garvey among others. Although this album received mixed reviews, Heligoland is a showcase of trip-hop with a more organic approach and deserves to be reinstalled among Massive Attack's masterpieces. In a 2010 interview, Del Naja said that they will now focus more on releasing EPs than LPs. This statement is followed by the extraordinary collaboration between Massive Attack, Burial and Hope Sandoval with their ethereal remixes of Four Walls and Paradise Circus in 2011. Five years later, Del Naja and his team release the app Fantom where users can hear parts of new songs while remixing them. A week later comes out the EP Ritual Spiritwith Tricky coming back on Take It There. Later this year, they release the single The Spoils with Hope Sandoval and Come Near Me with Ghostpoet. No albums but a collection of songs that once again prove the versatile talent of a band that keeps experimenting with sounds of the past and the future.
8. Their Utopia
Maybe more than any other band, Massive Attack perfectly understands the power and the responsibility they have as a band. Whether it's with the war in Ukraine recently, or when they partnered with a research centre in 2019 to explore the music industry's impact in order to "map the full carbon footprint of typical tour cycles" to significantly reduce emissions during their tours, Massive Attack keep being at the forefront of activism as a band. The last artistic sign we have from them is the release of their 2020 EP Eutopia, recorded across three cities during COVID-19 lockdown, each song featuring a speech about global change, basic income and the "Wealth Tax" policy, with collaborators Young Fathers, Algiers and Saul Williams. This EP, although less accessible, is the perfect symbol of what Massive Attack embodies, a musicaland political act that features the sound and the ideas they grew up with, never forgetting their origin, seeking to grow bigger, to innovate, to change our perception of music. And we'll keep waiting for them to blow our minds again, if they ever find the time to, in this troubled world that needs help.
II/ The Music
1. The First Album - Blue Lines (1991)
With Horace Andy, Shara Nelson, Tony Bryan, Tricky, and 3D all participating for the vocals (even with Neneh Cherry doing back vocals on Hymn for the Big Wheel, really feels like the collective work of a small community meshing together all the music that shaped their musical education. Considering this album as trip-hop is a bit anachronic since the word was only coined three years later. So what kind of music is this? Hip-hop, dub, soul, dance, all soaked in nightclub culture. But what's even more impressive with Blue Lines, is how well we hear those influences, while completely freeing themselves from the burden of the musicallegacy. On the final song, Hymn to the Big Wheel, we can already hear their will to raise awareness (poetically more than pragmatically for now on climate change. Blue Lines feels like the last album of music veterans, just like Talk Talk's last records. But hopefully for us, Blue Lines starts the career of a band that will continue to bring their music further.
About Safe From Harm :
The opening song of Blue Lines is made around a sample of Bill Cobham's Stratus. Sung by Shara Nelson, this beautiful track is one of Massive Attack's darkest. As if the band was taking us back to Scorsese's Taxi Driver, we follow the singing of a woman protecting her child from the rest of the world, populated by potential aggressors anxiously portrayed by 3D's vocals. Shara Nelson's vocals carry the whole song while the production relentlessly stays the same throughout the entire song, during the chorus, refrain and bridge, spreading this feeling of danger we can deeply feel, while Nelson acts as our protector, the one who will do whatever she can to stand up and face whatever threats will try to come after what's hers. Massive Attack's characters are not heroes, but they are not inactive souls either. They are observing their surroundings, ready to retaliate every time their rights might be endangered. Still today, this is Massive Attack's philosophy.
2. The Last Album - Eutopia (2020)
Only available on YouTube and social media, subtitled in different languages, Eutopia is a conceptual project incroporating speeches by three personalities, UN Paris Climate Agreement author Christiana Figures (with additional lyrics by Algiers), Universal Basic Income Principle Professor Guy Standing (with additional lyrics by Young Fathers) and finally the inventor of the US "Wealth Tax" policy Professor Gabriel Zucman (with additional lyrics by Saul Williams). Here again, the production is wonderful (by Euan Dickinson, same producer as Ritual Spirit EP) and the additional guest vocals bring to the song this soulfull trip-hop dimension that makes their greatest works. The unconventional part of the songs are of course the speeches, although they give us very valuable informations about food supplies, solidarity, COVID-19 economic consequences and basic income security.
3. The Album - Mezzanine (1998)
Born out of the rising tensions between each band members, Mezzanine is the miraculous achievement of a band who darkened their tone and refine their production to create this famous nervous project that keeps being one of the most influential albums of all time. Even if we can definitely spot a coherent approach on every song of the album, we can nonetheless feel how fragmented the band was. They are not looking for a clean sound, or joyful melodies like on Blue Lines, leaving behind a big part of their dub influences. Both Exchange tracks have the footprint of Mushroom's work, while Inertia Creeps and Group Four belongs more to 3D and Man Next Door as well as Black Milk to Daddy G. Once again, this is the work of a collective composed by three individuals who fought each others while letting their collaborators (Horace Andy, Elizabeth Fraser) add their own ideas. Massive Attack created somehting chaotic, out of control, an outlet for their conflits that unleashed their troubled artistry.
III/ The Playlist