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Massive Attack

Massive Attack

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Audio interviews

Massive Attack (1991)

Interview by Steven Daly, Rock's Backpages audio, 1991

The Bristol trio talk about the time being right for their music; what they listen to; albums vs. singles; the Bristol scene and sound, plus the influence of reggae; their recording and mixing process and the place for remixing.

File format: mp3; file size: 42.3mb; Interview length: 44' 04"; sound quality: **

List of articles in the library

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Massive Attack: Queen Elizabeth Hall, London

Live Review by Stephen Dalton, The Times, 16 June 2008

Much of Massive Attack's line-up for the Meltdown festival reflects their understated anger ...

Massive Attack: Unique 3

Report and Interview by Craig McLean, The Face, December 1995

With sales of Protection approaching a million. Massive Attack are going seriously global. They have recorded a love song with Madonna, Tina Turner wants to ...

Britpop Football Special: Ooh-aah, Rossit-ah!

Report and Interview by Ian Watson, Melody Maker, 25 May 1996

Martin Rossiter as Eric Cantona? Liam Gallagher squaring off against Damon Albarn? Robbie Williams and Steve Pulp in the same footie team? No, you're not ...

Massive Attack: Festival Hall, London

Live Review by Rick Pearson, The Evening Standard, 18 June 2008

THE FILM score to Ridley Scott's 1982 classic Blade Runner was always more than a fanfare for Harrison Ford's on-screen heroics. Eerie and ambient, Vangelis's ...

Tricky & Martina: Slack Magic

Interview by David Stubbs, Melody Maker, 14 May 1994

Remember Massive Attack's languid, smoky, shuffling, bluesy 'Unfinished Sympathy'? Former MA maverick TRICKY has done it again, with the languid, smoky, etc, etc 'Ponderosa'. DAVID ...

Massive Attack: The Bristol Method

Profile and Interview by Will Hermes, Spin, June 1998

Trip-hop pioneers Massive Attack heat up the chill-out room ...

Massive Attack: Essential Music Festival, Finsbury Park, London

Live Review by Calvin Bush, Muzik, October 1997

SCROWFFHHI! Whumphh! Elbows in face. Solid wall of pressed flesh barring entrance. Distant sounds of something vaguely musical happening on the horizon. Looks like it's ...

Massive Attack: The Three Racketeers

Interview by Dele Fadele, New Musical Express, 17 September 1994

With the follow-up to their 1991 monster Blue Lines in the can, MASSIVE ATTACK are out to prove that homegrown soul fusion can take on ...

Massive Attack: Singles 90/98 (Virgin)

Review by James Hunter, New York Observer, 15 February 1999

What Big Ears They Have! Massive Attack's Remix Art ...

Bristol responds to Bass

Report and Interview by Emma Warren, Jockey Slut, December 1996

More than any other British city Bristol has always had an identifiable musical sound. From Smith and Mighty, Massive Attack, Tricky and Portishead, to current ...

"Rock died out and then came pop now you're living in the world of... Trip Hop" — U.N.K.L.E.: 'If You Find Earth Boring'

Report by Bethan Cole, Mixmag, August 1995

One year ago we coined the term 'trip hop' for a new, instrumental school of stoned hip hop rhythms and psychedelic wizardry. Since then, the ...

Horace Andy: Still massive after all these years

Retrospective and Interview by James Maycock, The Independent, 19 June 1998

He was big 30 years ago, but Horace Andy is singing sweetly to this day. ...

Massive Attack: Protection (Virgin)

Review by Ben Thompson, The Independent, September 1994

THEIR FIRST ALBUM, 1991's sumptuous Blue Lines, opened up a whole new imaginative world for British dance music, in the same way that De La ...

Massive Attack: London Arena, Millwall, London

Live Review by Caroline Sullivan, The Guardian, 7 December 1998

Chilled-out prog hop struggling in a massive arena ...

Massive Attack: 100th Window

Review and Interview by David Stubbs, Uncut, March 2003

Sombre fourth album, featuring guest vocals from Sinéad O'Connor ...

Massive: Blue Lines (Wild Bunch/Circa); Inspiral Carpets: The Beast Inside (Mute)

Review by Adam Sweeting, The Guardian, 25 April 1991

Massive unfinished sympathy ...

Massive Attack: Mezzanine (Virgin)

Review by Keith Cameron, New Musical Express, 18 April 1998

FLOORED GENIUS ...

Massive Attack: He used to be massive

Interview by Lisa Verrico, The Times, 11 February 2003

Massive Attack have just one original member left. Robert Del Naja tells our critic about the struggle to create a fourth album alone. ...

Various: The Hard Sell (Earth Recordings/All formats)

Review by Dele Fadele, New Musical Express, 27 July 1991

NO CELL OUT ...

Massive Attack: Mezzanine (Virgin)

Review by Marc Weingarten, Los Angeles Times, 10 May 1998

MASSIVE ATTACK'S 1991 debut album, Blue Lines, has become a watershed album in the history of electronic dance music for a number of reasons. By ...

Trip Hop: Where The Beats Have No Name

Report and Interview by Stephen Dalton, Vox, July 1995

Trip-hop is now part of pop's international language — but the pioneers of Britain's most successful musical export in years refuse to admit it exists... ...

Massive Attack: Haçienda, Manchester

Live Review by Dave Simpson, The Guardian, 7 December 1994

MASSIVE ATTACK promised us a "multi-media experience" and, boy, they gave us one. The traditionally grey, post-modern confines of the Haçienda were swamped in camouflage ...

Song of the year: 1991 – Massive Attack's 'Unfinished Sympathy'

Retrospective by Robert Sandall, The Sunday Times, 12 October 2008

IT WAS CLEAR by the end of the 1980s that dance music was here to stay. Following the "rave" explosion of 1987, clubs all over ...

Richard Russell: Rich Pickings

Interview by Jamie Atkins, Record Collector, March 2018

As Richard Russell's collaborative album, Everything Is Recorded, is released, RC's Jamie Atkins meets him to talk about the recording and the music that led ...

Massive Attack v The Mad Professor: No Protection (Gyroscope/Caroline, $16.98) ****

Review by Steffan Chirazi, San Francisco Chronicle, 28 April 1996

Mad Professor Mixes Some Magic ...

Keep on Runnings

Report by Sean O'Hagan, The Guardian, 15 February 1992

Bob Marley's music is not the young music in Kingston today. Ragga not reggae is king. And that took the British group Massive Attack to ...

Massive Attack: The Leadmill, Sheffield

Live Review by David Bennun, Melody Maker, 17 December 1994

ASSAULT AND FLATTERY ...

Band of the decade: Massive Attack

Overview by Sean O'Hagan, The Observer, 29 March 1998

What is it that makes them so different? Well, one of them's called Mushroom. ...

Massive: Blue Lines (Circa)

Review by Jim Arundel, Melody Maker, 30 March 1991

RHAPSODY IN BLUE ...

Massive Attack: London Arena, London

Live Review by Neil Mason, Melody Maker, 19 December 1998

THE VICTORIOUS BIG ...

Blue Lines: Massive Attack's blueprint for UK pop's future

Retrospective by Sean O'Hagan, The Guardian, 28 October 2012

In 1991, the laidback Bristol collective roused themselves to unleash their debut album. Reissued 21 years on it remains a landmark. Here, an early champion ...

Horace Andy: Put It All Down To His Quaver

Interview by Ben Thompson, The Independent, 26 September 1996

Horace Andy has fathered 16 children. He's also had a long career in reggae. ...

Massive Attack: Surprise Attack

Report and Interview by William Shaw, Details, February 1995

Massive Attack invented a loping, trippy dance sound that could have turned them into international stars. When they decided they'd rather stay home in Bristol, ...

Trip Hop: Another City, Another New Sound

Report by Simon Reynolds, The New York Times, 28 May 1995

POP GROUPS hate being identified as part of a scene centred on a city. But if there's one thing bands resent even more, it is ...

Radiohead, Massive Attack: RDS Arena, Dublin

Live Review by Sean O'Hagan, The Guardian, 23 June 1997

Storming through the downpour ...

Massive Attack meet Adam Curtis: The Unlikely Double Act

Report and Interview by Sean O'Hagan, The Observer, 30 June 2013

At July's Manchester festival, the boundary-breaking band and radical film-maker will tackle the perilous state of democracy in a show that redefines the notion of ...

Massive Attack: 100th Window

Review by Will Hermes, Spin, 26 June 2003

BETWEEN U.K. MC Ms. Dynamite's debut and the rhyme battle rumoured to be brewing between Birmingham's Mike "the Streets" Skinner and Brixton's Roots Manuva, 2002 ...

Massive: Young Guns IV

Interview by Jeff Lorez, Blues & Soul, 2 April 1991

Massive have always been known for their individual stance in music making. Now the hard work appears to be paying off for the Bristol based quartet ...

Massive Attack: Go West

Interview by Sean O'Hagan, The Face, August 1994

When Shara Nelson and others moved on to new projects, the faces and spaces of Massive Attack's Blue Lines were superseded by silence. Three years later, ...

The K.L.F. and Massive Attack: Psychedelic Rock Enters the Progressive Phase

Overview by Simon Reynolds, The New York Times, 18 August 1991

SO VOLATILE is the club scene that few artists have been able to make a career out of dance music, which is released mostly as ...

The Next Level: Massive Attack: Mezzanine (Virgin) *****

Review by Andy Crysell, Vox, May 1998

Storming comeback from the Bristol sound system innovators ...

Massive Attack: Big Thinking

Interview by Paolo Hewitt, Select, April 1991

Once the Bristol dance trio were Massive Attack, now they're just MASSIVE but aim to be huge with 'Unfinished Sympathy', their new single. They're also ...

Massive Attack: 24-Hour Arty People

Interview by Stephen Dalton, New Musical Express, 13 January 2001

Two years and one near implosion later, Massive Attack are back; their new material is ready and everything's as it should be. But what's with ...

Massive Attack: Overland Attack

Interview by David Bennun, Melody Maker, 21 January 1995

Massive Attack made one of the great
 albums of the Nineties with Blue Lines. It took
 them three years to make the equally captivating Protection, ...

This Must Be The Place: Newport, Bristol, Walthamstow, Colchester: Everybody's Talking About... The True Significance Of Location

Book Excerpt by Ben Thompson, 'Seven Years of Plenty' (Gollancz), October 1998

"A recent article in the New York Times proclaimed Newport as The New Seattle..." Caroline Sullivan, The Guardian, 13 December, 1996 ...

Massive Attack: Blue Lines (Wild Bunch/Circa)

Review by Dele Fadele, New Musical Express, 6 April 1991

IMMENSE AT WORK ...

Massive Attack: Protection (Circa)

Review by Gavin Martin, Vox, October 1994

Direct Hit ...

Massive Attack: Wild At Heart

Profile and Interview by John Robb, Sounds, 6 April 1991

It's taken three years and a war, but MASSIVE have finally risen to the top of the charts. JOHN ROBB listens to their stunning debut ...

Smith & Mighty and Soul II Soul: Anyone Who Had A Sound

Profile and Interview by Paolo Hewitt, New Musical Express, 11 March 1989

Here PAOLO HEWITT gets on the Voice Beat with SMITH & MIGHTY and SOUL II SOUL. ...

Massive Attack: Herb Crawlers

Interview by Stephen Dalton, New Musical Express, 15 February 1992

When MASSIVE ATTACK released their debut LP last year, it was hailed as a masterful collage of rap, soul and reggae with a cinematic feel. ...

The Return of Massive Attack

Profile and Interview by Will Self, The Sunday Times, 24 January 2010

SOMEWHERE BACK in the early 1990s, when Britain was dull in a different way, I first heard Massive Attack's Blue Lines. Then in my early ...

Massive Attack Prepare To Storm The US!

Profile and Interview by Kris Needs, Rockpool, August 1991

The following feature appeared in New York industry magazine-tipsheet Rockpool on the eve of Massive Attack's introduction to the US market, their Blue Lines debut, ...

Massive Attack: Brixton Academy, London

Live Review by Nick Hasted, The Independent, 12 July 2004

MASSIVE ATTACK have been shaken almost to pieces in recent times. First, one of their central trio – Andrew "Mushroom" Vowles – left for good, ...

Massive Attack: Blue Lines

Review by Ben Thompson, Observer Music Monthly, 20 June 2004

FROM THE METROPOLITAN angst of 'Safe from Harm' - "If you hurt what's mine, I'll sure as hell retaliate" - to the insistent shaken bottle-top ...

Massive Attack Take A Stand

Interview by Stephen Dalton, The Scotsman, February 2003

3D talks to Stephen Dalton about war, melancholia and the duo's new 100th Window. ...

Looking for Identities: Massive Attack

Interview by Ben Thompson, Daily Telegraph, May 1998

A STATELY HARPSICHORD looms up out of a gently tapping drumbeat. A piano escorts an exquisite female voice through a bass guitar archway with the ...

Dark Side of the Spliff: Massive Attack

Interview by Rob Chapman, MOJO, July 1998

"ME AND ANGELO, our guitarist, got stuck in a cave in Padstow," says Massive Attack’s Robert ‘3D’ Del Naja, talking about one particularly eventful sojourn ...

Massive Attack: Mezzanine

Review by Rob Chapman, MOJO, May 1998

Eagerly-anticipated follow-up to 1994’s Protection, 64 minutes of guitar-driven downbeats, featuring the toppermost tonsils of Horace Andy and the angelic ambience of Liz Fraser on ...

Massive Attack: Mezzanine (Virgin)

Review by Barney Hoskyns, Rolling Stone, 28 May 1998

ELDER STATESMEN of the moody dance genre that used to be called trip-hop, Massive Attack like to take their time making albums. So long, indeed, ...

Trip Hop Don't Stop: Massive Attack and Portishead

Interview by Simon Reynolds, Melody Maker, 17 September 1994

Imagine a cross between ambient and hip-hop. Imagine a Brit version of Cypress Hill or Gravediggaz's spooky Gothic Hop. Imagine the sound of 'bombs exploding ...

Massive Attack: The Bristol Bunch

Interview by John McCready, The Face, January 1991

MASSIVE ATTACK were part of Bristol's Wild Bunch crew, a posse who pioneered UK hip hop. In 1986 they helped put together ‘The Look Of ...

Massive Attack: Wheeling In The Years

Interview by Jim Arundel, Melody Maker, 22 February 1992

BRITAIN IS CRAP, we decide over lunch in a Bristol restaurant where we're waiting for Massive Attack. The food is cold, the service is virtually ...

see also Tricky

see also Wild Bunch, The

see also Craig Armstrong

see also Horace Andy

see also Shara Nelson

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