massive attack : back! back!! back!!!

boo
Damon Albarn
Tunde Adebimpe

eeh
Hope Sandoval

should've tried to get Grace Jones in (has become my standard response to any new album tho)

Singers they should have got in:
Andrew Eldritch
Cilla Black
Michael Barrymore
Wild Man Fischer
Linda Sharrock
Kenny Lynch

So happy.

Are you denying your twin already?

Are you denying your twin already?

*weighs one's priorities carefully*

erm no, i amn't a triplet-wannabee after all. i just like 'bout a half of those windows :/

I would, however, like them to do something different next time. A country and western album perhaps.

Still waitin'.

http://www.nme.com/news/massive-attack/37587

If Weather Underground was almost finished in June, why don't they just release the dang thing. 2009, bla. Leak it!

"almost finished" = "haven't started yet"

"Del Naja was secretive about how the new album will sound though, saying: "To be honest, until its mixed I can’t even tell you that" = "haven't started yet"

Back! As received in a mailout:

Massive Attack have announced the release of their first new material in three years – an EP of four new tracks due for release on October 6th from Virgin Records. The lead song “Splitting The Atom” features Robert Del Naja (3D), Grant Marshall (Daddy G) and Horace Andy, while TV On The Radio frontman Tunde Adebimpe guests on “Pray For Rain”. The EP also has remixes of two new tracks; “Psyche” featuring Martina Topley-Bird is given the re-rub by Van Rivers & The Subliminal Kid who have recently remixed Bat For Lashes and The Big Pink, while the Guy Garvey fronted “Bulletproof Love” is stripped back to a minimalist reworking by Christoff Berg, who alongside Van Rivers & The Subliminal Kid produced the Fever Ray eponymous album.

Massive Attack will release their much anticipated fifth studio album In February, 2010. This time around sees collaborations with Damon Albarn, Hope Sandoval, Martina Topley-Bird, Guy Garvey and Tunde Adebimpe.

Over the last three years Robert Del Naja has written and produced soundtracks for a number of films and documentaries, including ‘Trouble In The Water’, ’44 Inch Chest’, ‘In Prison My Whole Life’ and ‘Gamorra’, the latter for which he won the David Di Donatello Award for Best Song. Earlier this year, Massive Attack won the Outstanding Contribution to British Music Award at the Ivor Novello Awards. Massive Attack will headline this year’s Bestival on Friday, September 11th ahead of their first full UK tour in three years that begins on September 17th in London.

For more information on Massive Attack, visit www.massiveattack.com

Sounds like Flying Lotus.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2fkqI0O_LX4

cheer up goths

sounds a bit overproduced and not that far from fly lo and that whole scene mixed with tom waits. nothing to write home about really.

Thank god for that.

Dear mom and dad,

I know you're not used to getting letters from me over the mail, but...

lol "overproduced"

I think it's nice enough, but it hasn't got me all that exciting. Sure the new album will be interesting at least.

‘Gamorra’

eh...like a mixture between "camorra" and "Gomorra"

Lazy bastards. I'm sick and fucking tired of everybody taking five years to make a new album. Is it really that fucking hard to make fifty minutes of listenable music??

I remember Nel Naja giving an interview just after 1000th Window about how they were going to be a lot less precious about the next one and knock it out relatively quickly, ha ha.

They'll never make an album anybody likes more than Blue Lines, Protection or 100th Window again, so why worry about how long it takes them to produced another album you're going to complain isn't as good as the previous ones?

lol

i read the title as ordering massive attack to get away from you

theyre boring now arent they?

No thoughts on the new EP now it's out? Title track is an odd one, reminds me of nothing so much as a very sleepy Fun Boy Three. Kind of wish they would commit to either slathering on the bass/menace or making this the great ska track it could have been. Still, it's nice to hear Daddy G again.

The Tunde track is complete zzz, sadly.

I used to love Massive Attack. Downloaded this single when it leaked and haven't been tempted to expand it and listen. Probably won't. The business about getting Burial in to remix the album sounds great but will never happen. They should have asked Tricky to join the group. Neither of them have much of a career left anyway.

MA maybe a bit more than Tricky, though I suspect that's as much to do with inactivity-as-quality-control vs Tricky's relatively long satring of middling to atrocious LPs. But yeah, the new songs are kind of blandly pleasant, sort of "yup, that's Massive Attack all right." What worries me more than anything is the possibility of MA turning into recent Unkle.

Er, string. String of bad LPs.

MASSIVE ATTACK SET TO RELEASE 5TH STUDIO ALBUM HELIGOLAND ON VIRGIN RECORDS FEB. 9th


(Nov.24th, 2009 -New York, NY) – Legendary trip-hop duo Massive Attack are set to release their highly anticipated 5th studio album Heligoland on EMI’s Virgin Records on February 9th, 2010. Last month, the duo released their first new material in three years, giving fans a preview of Heligoland with a 4-song EP Splitting the Atom which features 2 album tracks and 2 album track remixes. Heligoland features an all star cast of guest vocals from Damon Albarn, Hope Sandoval, Martina Topley-Bird, Guy Garvey and Tunde Adebimpe. Long time cohort Horace Andy makes a return alongside Massive Attack founding members Robert Del Naja (3D) and Grand Marshall (Daddy G). Damon also plays bass on ‘’Flat Of The Blade’ and keyboards on ‘Splitting The Atom’ while Portishead’s Adrian Utley plays guitar on ‘Saturday Come Slow’. The band also collaborated with DFA’s Tim Goldsworthy on selected tracks. The cover artwork features an original image by Robert Del Naja.

Over the last three years Robert Del Naja has written and produced soundtracks for a number of films and documentaries, including ‘Trouble In The Water’, ’44 Inch Chest’, ‘In Prison My Whole Life’ and ‘Gomorra’, the latter for which he won the David Di Donatello Award for Best Song. Earlier this year, Massive Attack won the Outstanding Contribution to British Music Award at the Ivor Novello Awards. In September, Massive Attack headlined this year’s Bestival ahead of their first full UK tour in three years. They have just announced a few more UK dates in February and are expected to announce a U.S. tour next year.

Tracklist:

1. "Pray For Rain (6:34)" (vocals: Tunde Adebimpe)
2. "Babel (2:56)" (vocals: Martina Topley-Bird)
3. "Splitting the Atom (5:18)" (vocals: 3D, Daddy G and Horace Andy)
4. "Girl I Love You (4:01)" (vocals: Horace Andy)
5. "Psyche (3:40)" (vocals: Martina Topley-Bird)
6. "Flat of the Blade (1:45)" (vocals: Guy Garvey)
7. "Paradise Circus (3:45)" (vocals: Hope Sandoval)
8. "Rush Minute (3:02)" (vocals: 3D)
9. "Saturday Comes Slow (4:17)" (vocals: Damon Albarn)
10. "Atlas Air (4:55)" (vocals: 3D)

(c&ped from wiki)

Pray For Rain:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HS8J_Oky5cw&feature=related

Pretty good. Nice beats.

Needs more Daddy G vocals :(

http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~ccho/Cards/history/Island%20Heligoland1.gif

Paradise Circus video = NSFW, video footage from The Devil In Miss Jones (1973) (and that's 73 year old ex porn actress Georgina Spelvin talking)

http://special.the-raft.com/massiveattackdvd/paradisecircus_full.swf

very good, but why does it stop in the middle?

the song i heard which i think was the tricky song sounded way too much like radiohead 'wolf at the door'

This is the best one from the EP:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2B9YSlSCbs

I'd never seen them live before, but watching them at Brixton earlier this week was equal parts intriguing, amazing and just a bit sad. They barely played anything pre-1998 (just Karmacoma and Safe From Harm, both still among the best songs of the night).

There was this weird feeling of seeing an iteration of the band that knew it had arrived fully-formed with Mezzanine and never worked out where to go from there. Inertia Creeps and, especially, Angel were incredible, the latter highlighting how important Horace Andy is to their whole sound. Like, his voice is amazing, so pitch perfect that you wonder why 3D bothered to sing on the last couple of albums at all. The exact opposite of poor Martina Topley-Bird, who had been tossed the ambulance ball of having to sing Teardrop, despite her voice being manifestly unsuited to it.

New stuff all cobblers, obviously. I still haven't met anyone who rates Young Fathers and doesn't work either at a broadsheet newspaper, in the music industry, or both, and the transparent hero worship did the ropey songs no favours at all.

Amazing how badly the bottom dropped out of the band after Mezzanine - like, the alchemy and the tension that held the band together and made them interesting just evaporated when Mushroom left. I'm listening to Future Proof right now and it's astonishing how well they nailed the production trends of the time, those crackly microhouse beats, but without the songs to do anything worthwhile with them.

Less said about the visuals the better, but it underlined the sense of a band (okay, 3D) who decide to focus on gravitas at the expense of virtually everything else. Fuck knows what Daddy G has been doing since 1998 btw.

There are like three songs I'd regard as keepers since Mezzanine. Which is not a great return.

I did not expect much from the last album but 5 years later, it's become one of my faves

I'm taking issue with the verbiage around "arrived fully-formed with Mezzanine" as it makes it sound like Mezzanine was their debut album and not their third critically-acclaimed (and fan-acclaimed) album in a row. I also don't think it's "obvious" that everything they've released since Mezzanine is cobblers but that's a matter of opinion.

That's why I said "an iteration of the band" and not the band itself. The last two albums are much closer to the sound of Mezzanine than they are to either Blue Lines or Protection.

I think you're too harsh on the post-Mezzanine material - Paradise Circus and Girl I Love You sounded fantastic at Glastonbury — and on the visuals, but I agree with you on Young Fathers. A band surviving on nothing but bewildering amounts of critical acclaim.

Those are the two best post-Mezzanine songs by quite some distance though.

I completely understand how the understated stasis of 100th Window can make those songs feel anonymous/formless/non-entities/etc but they really, really work for me.

I do not rate post-Mezzanine album because I think Massive Attack is an unimpeachable giant that can never be criticized; I rate them because I like them.

(I also think "Group Four" is the only successful song on the back half of Mezzanine; "Black Milk" is total garbage and "Mezzanine" is okay but doesn't do enough with its foundation to justify its length, so the idea of Mezzanine as an unflawed standard that they've been grasping to replicate doesn't scan for me.)

Mezzanine also has the terrible Dissolved Girl. One of those albums where the astonishing half so thoroughly eclipses the ho-hum half that it elevates the whole thing to greatness.

I mean, I like "Dissolved Girl" a lot but I can see the argument for it being terrible

"Black Milk" is total garbage

No it's not! I find it really hypnotic and atmospheric.

I loved Dissolved Girl when I was 19, but it's pretty cheesy really. Nice verse melody though.

I agree that the first half is clearly much better and there's no reason for the title track to be nealy six minutes long.

'Black Milk' was one of my favourite non-singles of theirs but hearing just how much of it is actually the Manfred Mann Earth Band sample killed that a bit.

Wow you just ruined that song for me, that sample is what I loved from it and I thought it was original material.

If that's the case then I don't recommend checking out all the sample sources for Blue Lines and Protection.

Mezzanine has an astonishing opening four tracks and then becomes a blur to me basically.

i've gone through stretches of actually preferring the back half of mezzanine, i think i overlistened to those first 4 songs back in the day. it's all good though

'paradise circus' is the only post-mezzanine track i really like even though it's kind of by-the-numbers, it repays all of its debts in that moment where the deep piano chords drop followed by the staccato low strings, sort of a pinnacle of what you can do with all-execution-no-ideas

I am resisting every impulse I have to tediously list the post-Mezzanine tracks I like but I will at the very least stick up for "Pray for Rain" fuiud

I love Mezzanine from start to finish!

Mezzanine also has the terrible Dissolved Girl. One of those albums where the astonishing half so thoroughly eclipses the ho-hum half that it elevates the whole thing to greatness.

― impossible raver (Re-Make/Re-Model), Monday, February 8, 2016 12:45 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

get out

anyway I mentioned this elsewhere but this remix from heligoland is great https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yC7P0zlp67I

'Man Next Door' is one of my absolute favourites on the record, great use of that Cure sample.

i like heligoland a lot
I like the songs on the ep too

clicked on that youtube link thinking it was going to be the gui boratto remix that was everywhere

Live With Me is very good as well. The videos for Live with Me and Paradise Circus show how utterly dour they can be though. It's like, how high are the stakes in your 5 minute weird-pop song that you had so make a video so gratuitously depressing?

It's remarkable that Massive Attack have thrived as long as they have considering that the people who wrote most of their best songs are no longer with the band. 3D's a vibes and vision guy, not a melody writer, and God knows what Daddy G does.

They should have invited Hope Sandoval for more songs, Paradise Circus overstays its welcome for a minute but its the best song they've made since Mezzanine. Hell they should invite her for one or two songs every record like they invite Horace Andy, she is also a perfect fit for them.

I also have no idea what Mushroom or Daddy G specifically added but you can tell they were missing in 100th Window. I guess Daddy G is the most 'dj' of them so he mainly contributes with choosing samples? Their previous albums had some smooth sexy vibes and 100th window is missing them, stripped from those vibes their sound is just cold and uninviting. It could be the lack of samples on that album.

wish I still had the promo version of 100th Window that had extra beeps at the beginning of the first track

beep. beep. beep. beep beep, beep

you can do those yourself with your mouth

i was quite into 100th window at the time, i must have said that already. it was so oppressive. i remember listening to it on earplugs walking in the dark in the fields in the winter of 2003. for me it really captured the gloomy atmosphere when bush was just about to invade iraq.

okay who is Azekel and why have I never heard of him beore

He came onstage with them last week and sang it pretty much perfectly.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KY0TZQTwwbk

Live With Me is very good as well. The videos for Live with Me and Paradise Circus show how utterly dour they can be though. It's like, how high are the stakes in your 5 minute weird-pop song that you had so make a video so gratuitously depressing?

― pastoral fantasy (jed_), Tuesday, February 9, 2016 12:56 AM (5 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

And again. They need to stop with this shit.

Yeah, this song isn't as good as either Live With Me or Paradise Circus on top of that. They put another new one with Topley-Bird on their vivo today sans video which is better.

New song with hope sandoval on vocals

https://youtu.be/4N1Q4W3Qd7w

Also a new onewith ghostpoet which I didn't like that much.

This one sounds like Bows and classic MA so it's great.

Oh I thought it was Martina on Spoils!

I might be alone in here but listening to the EP today again and the new songs and I think this might actually be the best they've sounded since Mezzanine. It has the same sort of creepy yet sexy vibe.

I wasn't 100% on board with 100th window or heligoland tho but I like the I dont know how to descibe it 'tar pitch' sounds they're doing nowadays.

A late-night drunken playing of "Spoils" has prompted a replaying of "recent" Massive Attack (by which I mean post-"Mezzanine"). Have enjoyed both "100th Window" and "Heligoland" more than I did at the time.

Has anyone really been paying circa £20 for the current singles?

people just stream and download stuff now, right?

time will vindicate my instant love/appreciation of post-Mezzanine Massive Attack

Heligoland didn't strike me at first but turned out to be their best after Mezzanine

Do we know when an album will be released, yet?

Almost tempted to spend £0.99 on The Spoils.

heligoland is super good. 'psyche' is like.. woah where did that come from.