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

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?

It does? When I just watched it it was about 5 minutes long.

The SWF points to this FLV file, if you download that (and you have a media player that can play flv files) then that's 5:20 as well.

http://dnl.interoute.com/{33b366c0-e4bb-4ebd-9992-7d461739cf68}/{c29cc4e3-2b70-4db9-9971-76b1e9cc34b8}/paradiseHD.flv

(URL will probably not work because of the brackets, copy/paste the whole line into your download manager or browser or something)

OK I got it all now, thx. This is very good. On first listen (or view in this case) I like it better than either that other (awful) single or anything on 100th Window.

Anybody know if the actual song has the porno interview in it?

probably not, as the running time of the song appears to be 3:45 (scroll up a bit)

this is pretty bland on first listen

That's a fantastic video. On first listen, it's hard to work out what I'll think of the song without the visuals and voiceover.

http://www.the-fly.co.uk/words/features/6571/massive-attack-%27heligoland%27-//-first-listen

this is a useful rundown as i listen exclusively to radiohead records

i would like for this to not be boring

Prayer For Rain has grown on me a lot, I think it's excellent now. Other new tracks I've heard still slightly meh.

it's hard to care anymore but being as they were my favourite band in the world for a good few years (91-95 era) it's hard also not to hope there's still life on the old dog.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGMUn5RuspM

Oh, and Paradise Circus, album version without the pr0n grandma

http://www.emi.fi/jukebox/play/1359/paradise_circus

all the leaked tracks so far: http://www.myspace.com/massiveattackcollective

are any as good as this?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1BHG-OupoME

full album has leaked

thanks orson

Hearing the leak just now, sounding ok on first listen. Favorite collabs so far are Martina's and Horace Andy's.

Might be biased because I have a crush on her but Hope Sandoval's song is amazing.

I think there are a handful of pretty good songs on this one, and a few forgettable ones that are still warmer than that half-baked album earlier this decade.

are you talking about 100th window? that was the album which captured the apocalyptic spirit of the time, beginning of the iraq crusade, the stock markets on their lowest, best. listening to it on the earphones wandering around in the snow in the fields. that was a pretty frightening but stark experience. i doubt the new one will be as good but i would like to be refuted.

I'm not gonna go that far in praising 100th Window but yeah, that album was pretty great and I've never gotten why people hate it beyond maybe them not liking monochromism as a style for Massive Attack.

actually iirc it came out just before the iraq war which was in the air at the time. that made it even stronger. the oppressive atmosphere of that album anticipating the crusade.

100th Window was good at the time, but I've barely revisited it.

otm, me neither.

listened to the new one once. what a fucking boring album. at its best it's like a ham-fisted and ineffective revisiting of mezzanine, which itself still sounds both more exciting and more contemporary than heligoland

I don't think the new album is that bad, but I doubt I'm gonna revisit it in the future

I quite like it on first listen. I don't think it's that reminiscent of Mezzanine, it's lighter and trippier.

You'd think this would be a good time for a new Massive Attack album what with the current vogue for heavy doom-laden monochrome scowling in British dance music.

dubstep interregnum

Getting quite into this actually. Early faves: Pray For Rain, Girl I Love You, Psyche, Paradise Circus (those strings at the end!).

There's two different Psyches btw. 3:48 = EP version, 3:21 = album version.

Paradise Circus is kind of creepily beautiful but the album as a whole is a bit of a drag. I wouldn't compare it to Mezzanine, which has a kind of coiled-spring momentum that's largely absent here.

How much input did Daddy G have with this record, incidentally? It feels a bit cheeky to be still using the Massive Attack name if it's just an outlet for 3D's monged out goth tendencies.

after two listens i dare say that i was not wrong in my skepticism. two tracks could grab my attention though. "girl i love you" and "paradise circus". especially the former is phantastic and would have fitted well onto "100th window" with the menacing, hypnotic bass line. "paradise circus" is mainly great because of hope sandoval. i like her voice even more now than before. still sleepy but less intrusive. more subtle, more mature.

The early faves I posted above are the only properly good tracks. Rush Minute and the Damon one aren't bad, the rest is various shades of meh.

But, you know, four good and two alright isn't bad for an album by a band at this stage in their career.

the subtle of ageism of lowered expectations

How do I make the start of "Paradise Circus" my ringtone?

xpost : Dear Mr. Snrub, I use mobilespin.net because it is so easy even a fool such as I can use it successfully.

http://www.mp3-to-m4r.net worked like a charm. I love web software that doesn't make you download anything or register your email. The first 40 seconds of "Paradise Circus" is now my ringtone. Rock!!

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.