Massive Attack
Massive Attack are an English trip hop collective formed in 1988 in Bristol by Robert "3D" Del Naja, Adrian "Tricky" Thaws, Andrew "Mushroom" Vowles and Grant "Daddy G" Marshall.
For the Nicki Minaj song, see Massive Attack (song).
The debut Massive Attack album, Blue Lines, was released in 1991. The single "Unfinished Sympathy" reached the charts and was later voted the 63rd-greatest song of all time in a poll by NME.[2] 1998's Mezzanine (containing the top 10 single "Teardrop") and 2003's 100th Window reached number one on the UK Albums Chart. Both Blue Lines and Mezzanine feature in Rolling Stone's list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.[3][4]
Massive Attack's awards include a Brit Award for Best British Dance Act, two MTV Europe Music Awards, and two Q Awards.[5][6] They have released five studio albums that have sold over 13 million copies worldwide.[7] Massive Attack support some political, human rights and environmental causes.
Musical style[edit]
Some of their most noted songs have been without choruses and have featured dramatically atmospheric dynamics, conveyed through either distorted guitar crescendos, lavish orchestral arrangements or prominent, looped/shifting basslines, underpinned by high and exacting production values, involving sometimes copious digital editing and mixing.[10] The pace of their music has often been slower than prevalent British dance music of the time. These and other psychedelic, soundtrack-like and DJist sonic techniques, formed a much-emulated style journalists began to dub "trip hop" from the mid-nineties onwards,[60] though in an interview in 2006, Daddy G said, "We used to hate that terminology [trip-hop] so bad,' laughs. 'You know, as far we were concerned, Massive Attack music was unique, so to put it in a box was to pigeonhole it and to say, "Right, we know where you guys are coming from.""[61]
Other projects[edit]
'Fire Sale' exhibition[edit]
A solo exhibition of Del Naja's art was held at the Lazarides gallery in central London, from 24 May to 22 June 2013. The show's content spanned a period of over twenty years and featured many of the art pieces that Del Naja created for Massive Attack. Each piece, reinterpreted especially for the exhibition, was hand-printed and finished. The show also featured three one-off 'digital infinity mirrors', two of which contained phrases supplied by Reprieve that were extracted from drone pilot dialogues. Del Naja performed a DJ set during the opening night on 23 May 2013.[62]
Massive Attack and Adam Curtis[edit]
Del Naja conceived and designed an eight-night festival with filmmaker Adam Curtis—in collaboration with UVA (United Visual Artists)—that premiered in Manchester, UK in July 2013. The festival featured Curtis's film, unofficially titled The Plan, which was projected on a huge screen surrounding the audience, while music from Massive Attack was interweaved throughout the film.[63] Del Naja, who orchestrated the film's soundtrack, described the experience as a "collective hallucination" and the film was also shown at the Manchester International Festival in July 2013.[64][65][66][67] Music created by Del Naja for the festival became the score for a BBC production entitled HyperNormalisation in 2016.[68]
In 2019, Del Naja and Adam Curtis teamed up for a second time on a live show based on the band's Mezzanine album.[69] The show challenged the idea of nostalgia and power, and featured machine learning GANS and deep fakes from Mario Klingemann, as well as new films from Curtis that were used to tell a narrative story. They were used as visuals for cover versions of non Massive Attack songs based on samples and loops that made up the album's identity.[70]
Mezzanine DNA[edit]
In April 2019, it was reported that Massive Attack had encoded Mezzanine into DNA to mark the 20th anniversary of the seminal 1998 album. The album has also been made available in the form of a matte black spray paint can. A limited number of spray cans will contain the DNA encoded audio within matte black paint and each can will contain approximately one million copies of the album.[71] Addressing the novel storage method, Del Naja – who is also known as a graffiti artist as ‘3D' – said: “It’s a creative way to store your back catalogue, although DNA-encoded spray paint is unlikely to be adopted by street artists seeking anonymity”.[72]
Decarbonisation project[edit]
On 28 November 2019, Robert Del Naja announced that Massive Attack partnered with a research centre based at the University of Manchester to explore the music industry's climate impact. He wrote in a column in The Guardian: "the commissioning of the renowned Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research to map the full carbon footprint of typical tour cycles, and to look specifically at the three key areas where CO2 emissions in our sector are generated." This will include information about band travel and production, audience transport and venue. "The resulting roadmap to decarbonisation will be shared with other touring acts, promoters and festival/venue owners to assist swift and significant emissions reductions."[73] (See 'Environmentalism' below)
Activism and politics[edit]
Anti-war advocacy[edit]
Robert Del Naja was critical of the policies of the UK government under Tony Blair. He was strongly opposed to the 2003 war against Iraq, and with fellow musician Damon Albarn personally paid for full-page advertisements against the war in the NME magazine.[74]
Massive Attack have worked with Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and Stop the War Coalition, while also having helped fund a legal challenge to military intervention in international courts.[75]
Human rights[edit]
In 2008, Massive Attack curated the annual Meltdown festival on London's South Bank. During the two weeks of live performance, cinema and art, they worked with human rights lawyer Clive Stafford Smith and his organisation Reprieve which uses the law to enforce the human rights of prisoners.[76]
In 2010, the video shot by Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin for the song "Saturday Come Slow", featuring Albarn, drew attention to the use of music in torture.[77]
Massive Attack donated all proceeds from their 2010 EP Atlas Air to War Child, a charity the band previously supported when they contributed to The Help Album.[78]
In late July 2014, Del Naja and Marshall visited the Bourj El-Barajneh refugee camp in Lebanon to meet with Palestinian volunteers at an educational centre. The band's profit from the show in Byblos was donated to the centre.[79]
In 2017, Massive Attack performed three shows in support of Hoping, an organisation that helps raise money and supports projects for Palestinian youth in refugee camps in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, Lebanon and Syria.
British politics[edit]
In 2007, Del Naja, musicians Albarn and Brian Eno, and United Visual Artists contributed to a Greenpeace demonstration against the renewal of the Trident nuclear programme that was held on board the Arctic Sunrise on the River Thames.[80]
On 14 November 2012, on the eve of the Bristol Mayor election, the band caused some surprise by endorsing independent millionaire and former Liberal Democrat George Ferguson, citing the need for a mayor who would help facilitate creative projects to the city, and wasn't simply following a party political agenda.[81] Previously, Del Naja had openly criticised Ferguson for being a member of the Society of Merchant Venturers,[82] an organisation dating back to the 16th century which had many connections with the Bristol slave trade.[83] Del Naja endorsed Ferguson again in the 2016 election.
In September 2018, Massive Attack criticised the Mayor of Bristol for cancelling the Bristol Arena project in the Temple Meads area of Bristol. The Mayor had announced a private sector company, YTL would build a privately funded arena in Filton, a northern suburb of Bristol and the band announced they would not play there. Despite this, when a pop up arena was temporarily erected on the Filton site, Massive Attack played two gigs in March 2019.
In November 2019, along with other public figures, Massive Attack signed a letter supporting Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn describing him as "a beacon of hope in the struggle against emergent far-right nationalism, xenophobia and racism in much of the democratic world" and endorsed him in the 2019 UK general election.[84]
International politics[edit]
During a concert in Istanbul in 2014, Massive Attack named those who died in anti-government protests on the outdoor screen at their back with the following sentences: "Their killers are still out there" and "We won't forget Soma".[85][86]
Massive Attack have previously played two shows in Israel, but have refused to perform there since 1999 "as a form of non-violent pressure on Israel to end its brutal occupation of Palestine".[87] They have described this as "not an action of aggression towards the Israeli people" but "towards the [Israeli] government and its policies", arguing that "the Palestinians [in Gaza and the West Bank] have no access to the same fundamental benefits that the Israelis do."[88] In May 2020, Massive Attack urged Israel to end the blockade of the Gaza Strip.[89]
Del Naja and Thom Yorke of Radiohead threw an unofficial party at the occupied UBS building in the city of London in December 2011, in support for the international Occupy movement.[90]
Environmentalism[edit]
In 2010, Massive Attack donated the income from a Lincoln car commercial to the clean up campaign after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.[91]
Since October 2018, Massive Attack have also been supporting the climate activists of the Extinction Rebellion group, also known as XR, which conducted protests in London in October 2018 then April 2019. On 21 April, Massive Attack played a DJ set for the Extinction Rebellion protesters[92] in the heart of London in Marble Arch.[93] In July and October 2019, the group protested in 60 other cities worldwide,[94] Robert Del Naja providing a portable radio network using speakers in backpacks with receivers and transmitters for the campaigners in London.[95]
In 2021 the band published a report they had commissioned from the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research. The report examined the impact of live music on the environment and gave a set of recommendations for meeting the Paris agreement targets. Del Naja criticised the UK government for not doing more to meet the targets.[96] Massive Attack became the first band globally to commit their touring companies to the UN “Race to Zero” – Paris 1.5 compatible emissions reductions schedule.[97]
Other[edit]
In 2005, Del Naja organised and performed at a charity concert in Bristol for Tsunami Relief with Adrian Utley and Geoff Barrow of Portishead. The two-night event featured Massive Attack, Portishead, Robert Plant, the Coral and Albarn.
In March 2018, following the Facebook–Cambridge Analytica data scandal, Massive Attack suspended their Facebook page, stating: "In light of Facebook’s continued disregard for your privacy, their lack of transparency and disregard for accountability – Massive Attack will be temporarily withdrawing."[98]
Awards and nominations[edit]
Billboard Music Awards[edit]
The Billboard Music Awards honor artists for commercial performance in the U.S., based on record charts published by Billboard.[99] The awards are based on sales data by Nielsen SoundScan and radio information by Nielsen Broadcast Data Systems.[100] The award ceremony was held from 1990 to 2007, until its reintroduction in 2011.[101]
Bibliography[edit]
Chemam, Melissa, Massive Attack: Out of the Comfort Zone, Tangent Books (2019) ISBN 1910089729, ISBN 978-1910089729
