Twelve years in, four albums deep and one founder member less is an accurate way to describe Bristol’s biggest export since Cary Grant. With Grant “Daddy Gee” Marshal on sabbatical, Robert Del Naja — better known as 3D — took it upon himself to rope in long-time vocal collaborator and legend Horace Andy and Catholic phobic Sinead O’Connor to help construct 100th Window, Massive Attack’s back-to-basics millennial music debut.
Collaborations are the backbone and mainstay of what make Massive Attack stick as a band loaded with credibility, longevity and just enough attitude and quirkiness to satisfy at least two million people per album released. In a world where groups are manufactured and no longer borne from a passion to perform, their brand-new album confirms that the music world and the fans within do still require a periodic dose of dynamic originality, even if, as in Massive Attack’s case, it’s only every four years.
Since the group’s inception in 1987, Massive Attack have delivered albums critically acclaimed for their respective extraordinary vision, ambition and originality. Blue Lines, Protection, Mezzanine and now 100th Window are all indicative of the growing relationships the group has attracted over the years. Each visitor, from Neneh Cherry to Everything but the Girl’s Tracy Horn and Cocteau Twins’ Liz Fraser, has been sucked into their creative whirlwind.
On the group’s current single, Special Cases, Sinead O’Connor has also unpicked the lock to even greater acclaim for these architects of sound. Their last album sold in excess of three million copies and afforded them the opportunity to deliver their Mezzanine magic first-hand to a South African audience, blown away by their performance. In explaining how Massive Attack took the leap from the last album to their latest, 3D describes it as yet another bridging exercise. “I think Mezzanine was part of a way of trying to get away from Protection, as Protection was a way of getting away from Blue Lines, and every album’s been trying to get away from its predecessor,” he acknowledges with a rueful smile. “And I think this album was about going back into a sort of laboratory as such and trying to mess with more sounds and using instruments again, as we tried with Protection.”
The most startling and obvious difference or omission on 100th Window, in comparison with the three albums before it, is the absence of all things begged, borrowed or stolen. “With this record there was a conscious decision, after spending a lot of money on lawyers, not to use samples again, unless we made them ourselves, unless we sampled our own music,” Del Naja explains. “We started off as an experimental proposition and a lot of it was based on DJing. The idea of sampling and looping things came from that whole world. To move away from it to make this album sound fresh meant cutting off a lot of that history.”
Finding a comfortable and believable place, where technology sits alongside the traditional without an ensuing dogfight, was Massive Attack’s single biggest challenge when it came to recording the new disc. With the digital age a living, breathing reality, 3D invested in sensible hardware to complement the creative process. “The equipment has changed quite a lot,” Del Naja admits. “For this record we used computers instead of tape and stuff like that. I still listen to a lot of old music, as much as I do modern, and I think there’s things that will always go … that you carry with you like baggage.” [Smiles].
At a time when the West is openly rejecting the East, 3D and his trusty bank of hard drives and occasional keyboards have produced an album that bridges the cultural divide yet again — as happened with Inertia Creeps and Teardrop‘s pre-millennial tension. “I really love the sound of Eastern strings,” 3D enthuses. “They contain a raw, beautiful emotion. The current state of the world has rubbed off on this album, no question. You can’t help feel that the West is dominating the East and I wanted to bring some of those emotions into the record.”
With more affiliations, sponsorships and awareness campaigns than Coldplay, Massive Attack, with the help of like-minded musos, are cautiously looking at ways of influencing change through the music they write, something that 3D respects. “Only a few people I think have ever written amazing protest songs that stand up as beautiful pieces of music and I don’t think I’m clever enough to do that myself. We tend to use the press, the power of advertising … we spend money on it, go on the marches, do interviews and use the message board and web links to other sites to get people to sign petitions and more.”
With war on Iraq more likely each day with every new weapons cache found, and general unease with the build-up of troops, Massive Attack are doing everything in their power to avert the war and the inevitable loss of life. “Damon from Blur and myself are trying to muster up support for a war debate,” 3D continues. “We want people to challenge the decisions being made by the world’s superpowers with regard to the impending war in Iraq. What is it for? Why is it happening now? Why are we involved? There doesn’t seem to be enough talk or enough debate about it and war seems to be the path we’re going down as opposed to using proper diplomacy.”
Hail then, all that is politically, socially and, most importantly, musically beyond reproach, extending way past the obvious, settling somewhere near the dark underbelly of life with all its flaws and weaknesses exposed.
100th Window, released by Virgin, is out now on CD