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?

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 album is terrible.

This is mostly ehhhhh, but "Girl I Love You" is fucking fantastic.

I had been totally mystified how such a great band could turn to such shit after the godlike genius of their first three albums, THEN I read on the wigglypedia that Manfred Mann sued their asses right after Mezzanine came out for sampling "Tribute" on "Black Milk." And now it all makes sense. Go listen to "Black Milk," then listen to "Black Melt" (which is the version of the song without the sample) and it sounds exactly like this. Now they're all scared to put some rockin' beats in their songs because they don't want to get sued. BRING BACK THE SAMPLES, DAMMIT!

Or maybe Mushroom was the real genius in the band.

i like the porno video, but hope that voice over isn't on the album

It's not. That would be bizarre.

that's good to hear , but since you've heard it, how do they fill up those kind of long instrumental sections. Listening again now and realizing underneath the porno talk lies some middling instrumentation. It really works best when Hope sings.

It works fine as long as you're not mentaly superimposing the dialogue. Sounds gorgeous to me. Depends what you consider middling, I guess.

I like it when they hold a solid melody and don't fall into late 90s trip hop territory.

Girl I Love You really is absolutely fucking immense.

A review in this week's New Yorker.

i am surprised about the german reviews. they are all so f*cking positive. that album is a real stinker except girl i love you and the hope sandoval song.

Yeah, I'm surprised by any review that doesn't agree that Girl I Love You and Paradise Circus are on a different plane to the rest of the record. It seems like less a matter of opinion than an objective fact.

On a purely sonic level, I'm enjoying the whole thing. I really like Pray For Rain, just cos I could listen to that drum tone forever.

There's a lot to enjoy sonically but the whole thing, Girl I Love You aside, lacks any kind of compelling drama. Splitting the Atom just kills it stone dead - I don't know what they were trying to do there.

What do you think of 100th Window, Dorian?

well, expecting the worse, this album ain't that bad really. No mindblowing standouts like on their first three album but a pretty consistent sinister cosiness throughout.

I'd say that Girl I Love You is absolutely as mindblowing as anything on the first 3 records.

But yeah, generally I'm far happier with this than I was expecting. Mind you, I was expecting a big bag of donkey bollocks.

Here's the wicked Gui Boratto remix for Paradise Circus (the blogger wrongly attributes the singing to Boratto's wife and, well.. just ignore his blurb).

http://www.themusicninja.com/progressive-house-gui-boratto-no-turning-back-new-massive-attack-paradise-circus-remix/

100th Window is hard to love but there's this wonderful obsessive claustrophobia to it, as if it had been made in Jake Gyllenhaal's flat in Zodiac, with newspaper clippings and mad scribblings pinned to the wall. I love the more electronic tracks, like Small Time Shot Away. But I always loved 3D's rapping and it's a shame he's shifted into unexpressive singing - well, murmuring - instead.

Yeah, that's pretty much how I feel about it. I admire it a lot, for it's form and accomplishment, but I'd only say I 'love' Future Proof.

There are 4 tracks on this new record that I really like, 2 of which I love; that's the same as Mezzanine. Ergo, Heligoland is as good as Mezzanine in Nickland.

That's insane

Hahaha; maybe the stuff I'm not so bothered about on Mezzanine is better than the stuff I'm not so bothered about on Heligoland, but I always thought Mezzanine was massively front-loaded, too long, and samey in the 2nd side.

dissapointed shara nelson wasnt mentioned in the guardian review as one of their best collaborators.

going to try and hear this today.

One of the things I was surprised by when I first started visiting ILX was the apparent general agreement that Mezzanine was the best Massive Attack album. The highs are colossal but, like Nick says, the second side's a trudge. It's still Blue Lines and Protection all the way for me.

shara nelson is weirdly forgotten isn't she! despite featuring on, like, their signature tune. i used to own her two solo albums and i remember them being pretty good.

i <3 mezzanine throughout - the second half has the amazing title track, "man next door" and i probably prefer the fuller-sounding "black milk" and "group four" to "teardrop", as liz fraser collabs go. only track i don't like on it is "exchange" and even that's more unnecessary than dislikeable.

100th Window is hard to love but there's this wonderful obsessive claustrophobia to it

This is very OTM.

Blue Lines is still their best, tho.

I'm probably alone in liking Splitting the Atom, but I think I appreciate it because it's a group cut that kind of shuffles along. 3d's default attitude/song speed seems to be drudging along so it'll never be Karmacoma. There's nothing that really clenches the sound; it's as if the kind of gritty influence Tricky had could make its way in.

You're right, Lex, Man Next Door is astonishing - forgot that was side two. With Girl I Love You I've decided that Horace is the true hero of Massive Attack. He's always there so you take him for granted, and Light My Fire was notoriously horrible, but without him they'd be screwed.

I don't see how anyone could have heard "One Love" off of the first album and not known that Horace Andy was the keystone to Massive Attack from the very beginning.

Group Four is amazing, one of the best tracks on Mezzanine. It does 'desolate' better than anything else in their catalogue. Also, the "to think that I laid next to you wasting time while I could do a simple job" bit is sort of crushing.

I never liked Black Milk very much, it felt kind of rote by that stage of the game.

Actually, forget that, it's Dissolved Girl that was the rote and generic one, not Black Milk.

worth hearing the original(?) Man Next Door by Dennis Brown

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Q87PHE7wYU

what MA do with it is markedly excellent tho

no way, "Dissolved Girl" is a swirly stomping trance monster

i never liked Dissolved Girl much. Black Milk is majestic.

me personally i stopped paying as much attention to MA after the second album/the mad professor remix. they started sounding a lot more cold. though ive recently gone back to those later albums and found theres quite a bit to like, but it did seem they started to try and excise their soul/hip-hop/reggae influences as they went on. so interested to hear the new one if it returns to some of their early influences.

though i find myself fwding through the raps on the first album.

It doesn't return to any of their early influences.

Three great things about Man Next Door

1. In the original, the singer is a reasonable man getting aggravated by his neighbours. In the Massive version, he's frothing with paranoia - there might not even be a man next door for all we know.
2. The thematic link with the Cure's 10:15 Saturday Night - that's some clever sampling
3. It was accidentally blasted out of a PA at a Tory conference one year, leading to confused news reports that the Tories wanted to use it as their election theme. That would have been a bold fucking choice.

OMG I JUST REMEMBERED HELICOPTER GIRL lol

they started sounding a lot more cold

this is why mezzanine is so great

1. Didn't the Slits version go halfway towards that?
2. And that lead to Razorlight?
3. um...

xpost - so the guardian review is a load of old shit then? still gonna check it out. though i hated that first lead leak.

i haven't read the guardian review yet. on one listen i thought heligoland was really boring and kinda pointless at this stage, no track leapt out and even the gui boratto remix of the single doesn't improve matters.

Razorlight?

Not heard the Slits cover - that may well be the source of MA's version

All the new one goes back to is having some recognisable tunes.

Could do with some more, though. Shara Nelson, Tracey Thorn and Nicolette all wrote fantastic, striking melodies whereas here Guy Garvey, Tunde etc tone down their melodic instincts to suit the minor-key gloom.

i dont know why they dont go back to sourcing unheard voices rather than their celeb mates.

True true.

true indeed and such a tired roster of celebs.

unrelated but side 2 of Mezzanine is pretty much the essence of that album (a bit like for Disintegration)

OK, so I went back to Mezzanine side 2 and I'm still not convinced. Dissolved Girl is dreadful - overblown guitars, bland vocals - a glimpse of the dud Mezzanine might have been had the overdone the gothic rock moves. Black Milk is the closest they ever came to generic sluggish trip hop. The title track suffers badly by comparison with Risingson. Man Next Door is colossal, and Group Four is far more dramatic than I remembered, but I still think it's too frontloaded to be a masterpiece.

Risingson reminded me that 3D and Daddy G (and sometimes Tricky) trading rhymes used to be one of my favourite sounds in pop. The fact that Splitting the Atom squanders that chemistry on such a lifeless beat is a crying shame. It's interesting that Massive, Tricky and Portishead all fell out of love with hip hop as they got older - in the first two cases it was to their detriment.

i hate their rapping but where they took hip hop in their productions was always more interesting to me. though not when theyre doing more straight up hip hop, i dont think i even liked their collabos with black thought and mos def all that much. i didnt really think of it as them falling out of love with hip hop as they got older - though yes, that makes total sense, and mirrors most people who loved hip hop of their age - i just assumed it was them catering a bit more to their more mainstream base.

Black Milk is the closest they ever came to generic sluggish trip hop.

i don't see how it can be sluggish other than anything at that tempo being sluggish. it's DEFT.

i love Mezzanine the track too, more than Risingson. Group 4 is obviously stunning but one i tended to skip as i was rarely in the mood for it's darkness.

I don't think they're interested in catering tbh. Whatever direction they go in, I think it's entirely sincere. 100th Window was nobody's idea of a crowdpleaser.

I loved their rapping so much - along with Tricky they invented a uniquely British style of MCing that nobody else pursued after them. I say this as someone who generally hates the sound of Brits rapping.

Black Milk is the closest they ever came to generic sluggish trip hop.

idk mane they basically invented it, so i think they have a right to make trip hop! that track is so 1998 it hurts, but i like it. lol "but".

though it doesn't need to be 6:22 long, jeez

too short

he spells it with a $ iirc

98 was a bit late in the day to be making something so straight down the line though - ethereal vocal + hip hop beat/scratching + gothic ambience. Even fucking Crustation were doing it by that point.

all Massive Attack albums are 2 years late

"I loved their rapping so much - along with Tricky they invented a uniquely British style of MCing that nobody else pursued after them. I say this as someone who generally hates the sound of Brits rapping."

i always thought their rapping was a bit more in line with non hip-hop rapping, from people that were obv steeped in hip hop but werent trying to be mcs, like the streets, or - lol- fun loving criminals (i know the vibe is totally diff) etc.

so it has kinda continued, even if its stuff like that guy who did that stars in their eyes song last year.

but MAs flow is basically an old one, just made less forceful (cos that would prob sound silly in their mouths), and more stonerish/quiet (cos that would be scary otherwise). sort of like freedom williams-gone-trip hop.

It's the tone more than the flow - so effortless and, for want of a better word, cool. The way they interacted on Five Man Army, they just sounded like the coolest band on Earth.

youre right. it is 'cool', hence why i thought of huey from the FLC (though i dont really think he was cool). i think they have something in common with the likes of us3 and people like that generally, non hip-hop rap (and for people that might find normal hip hop too hard). i just dont tend to like that 'cool' vibe.

funnily enough, i always thought spaceape would be a great fit for massive attack. i wonder if they ever approached each ogther. wasnt kode 9 originally working with daddy g?

Haha is that the 1st mention of Crustation upthread? I remember buying this album. lol late 90s

I spent most of this weekend listening to this album. I have no idea what the people who dislike this are hearing because, to my ears, it is competing with Owen P's Heartland for best album of 2010 so far.

Ordered this from Amazon. For some reason it will be arriving today, not last Tuesday -- maybe they had the release date somehow mixed up. Was it pushed forward? In any case... expectations not too high for this, but hoping to find a few great tracks among the rest. I was blown away by their live show in 2006 (I think), but I'm prepared for a mediocre album.

this is the original of man next door aka I've Got To Get Away

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

although my favourite is Dave Barker's version which also predates the Dennis Brown one (can't find this on youtube) and may actually be superior even to the massive attack take.

I also love this tune, which I think it's loosely based on. Definitely lyrical similarities. Coincidentally, Johnny Dollar was the alias of one of the guys who worked with Massive Attack.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_rEU5v_LGE

oh that's nice. curiouser and curiouser. here's the Dave Barker Version: "i just can't stand it!/ i just can't stand it!"

http://www.sendspace.com/file/v9azep

I have no idea what the people who dislike this are hearing
i hear a record which seems to be made by a robot or something. unimaginative, lifeless, boring, repetitive tracks which go nowhere. except the two songs i mentioned before. what do i miss? does the album get better by each listen? btw the cover art is abominable too.

^ they should ban it from the underground

The cover art is unforgivable, yeah.

I think the songs are very tightly wound. I love the singing pretty much across the board, particularly "Girl I Love You", "Pray For Rain" and "Saturday Come Slow" (the parallels between that and "This Is A Low" are what draw me to it) and I like how they've rediscovered how to build a song out of a monochromatic sound palette without being entirely static; I was also a fan of the glacial reserve exhibited by 100th Window but was kind of concerned that "Splitting The Atom" was a sign that they were going to stay in that vein with the sound density removed. Instead, they slimmed down the sound in spots to reintroduce sense of nimbleness that they haven't really used since Blue Lines.

btw "Paradise Circus" and "Rush Minute" have now joined the ranks of the first 3 songs I listed in terms of tracks this album has me obsessed with

I like the cover art! It reminds me for some reason of the Stephen Gammell artwork for the Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark book series.

http://i159.photobucket.com/albums/t159/JCDentonDX/Blog/scary1pic01.jpg

rush minute is my fave by far now

"rush minute" is quite nice, you are right. not a lot happening and a bit repetitive but it has something about it.

too many vocalists. i mean i don't even dislike elbow but guy garvey's vocal is so fucking dreary and depressing (without even being, like, seductively or groovily melancholy like MA used to do). i have to say that the horns on that track are gorgeous though.

rush hour has something... but then again it also had 3D's self parodic vocal and those guitars, which are horrible. worse, it also induces the lyric "all is clear/ in a glass of beer".

by horrible guitars i mean the ones at around the three minute mark. the ones are the end are pretty good sounding.

I am at the Massive Attack gig tonight - my first extended exposure to them aside from recently hearing "Mezzanine". I find it alternately thrilling and dull.

I wondered why they even play live at all when I saw them. They tinker away at their albums for years until they sound just right and then tour to show us how impossible it is to recreate that sound with a live band?

every massive attack concert i attended was a snoozefest. their music simply does not work live.

I saw them in 2004, if I recall, and it was one of my favorite shows ever at the time. Then again, I was rather drunk.

they were fucking fantastic in front of the Opera House in March

http://www.residentadvisor.net/photos/2010/au100315massiv/100315massiveattack27.jpg

done a real 180° on this album - really loving it now after much exposure. The Albarn track is pretty awesome

It's still one of my favorites of the year.

I love Pray For Rain, Psyche, Girl I Love You and Paradise Circus. The rest I'm still not entirely convinced by.

I wonder how much money they make from House.

Give "Rush Minute" another chance, it becomes totally unstoppable after a while

https://twitter.com/hasitleaked/status/652239450911698944

!

Mezzanine = still all-time for me. As much as I like the albums that came before and some of what came after, I don't think they've ever topped it.

if I bump a Beatles thread will you pop in to say that Revolver was really their strongest album front-to-back? can I use you to get up to speed quickly on the CW best gabber tracks? so many possibilities.

Run The Jewels isn't surprising, they played that Banksy Weston-super-Mare abomination this year. Tricky, though.

Yeah I am unreasonably excited about the prospect of Tricky

I hope they get CREEP to produce and/or remix

if I bump a Beatles thread will you pop in to say that Revolver was really their strongest album front-to-back?

Absolutely not, because I don't think it is.

Tempted to get tix for their arena show in February - are they worth seeing live?

So I've heard. I'm seeing them in Brixton in Feb.

seen them live twice, once in 2004 and then 2014. Current female vocalist for their tour was martina topley bird?

Listened to the new ep this morning, seemed promising. The Tricky collab track was actually the weakest I thought.

Dead Editors and Tricky song are the highlights for me.

I meant dead editors and ritual spirit!

The tricky song is also the weakest one for me but it's not bad at all.

I do feel their arrangements seem crowded and overworked these days, there's none of the elegance of a Teardrop or a Safe From Harm. I wish they'd chill out and strip it back a bit.

I know, Massive Attack in "not as good as they used to be" shocker.

I don't know... this sounds like the best shape they've been since Mezzanine. Can't wait for the new record.

They were excellent at Brixton last night. Played a lot of new stuff - a few of the songs didn't click, but most boded well for the new album.

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.