Massive Attack
63 articles
Audio interviews
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
Massive: Blue Lines (Wild Bunch/Circa); Inspiral Carpets: The Beast Inside (Mute)
Review by Adam Sweeting, The Guardian, 25 April 1991
Massive unfinished sympathy ...
The Next Level: Massive Attack: Mezzanine (Virgin) *****
Review by Andy Crysell, Vox, May 1998
Storming comeback from the Bristol sound system innovators ...
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, ...
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 ...
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: 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 ...
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. ...
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 ...
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 ...
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: London Arena, Millwall, London
Live Review by Caroline Sullivan, The Guardian, 7 December 1998
Chilled-out prog hop struggling in a massive arena ...
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 ...
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 ...
Massive Attack: The Leadmill, Sheffield
Live Review by David Bennun, Melody Maker, 17 December 1994
ASSAULT AND FLATTERY ...
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, ...
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 ...
Review and Interview by David Stubbs, Uncut, March 2003
Sombre fourth album, featuring guest vocals from Sinéad O'Connor ...
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 ...
Various: The Hard Sell (Earth Recordings/All formats)
Review by Dele Fadele, New Musical Express, 27 July 1991
NO CELL OUT ...
Massive Attack: Blue Lines (Wild Bunch/Circa)
Review by Dele Fadele, New Musical Express, 6 April 1991
IMMENSE AT WORK ...
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 ...
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: Singles 90/98 (Virgin)
Review by James Hunter, New York Observer, 15 February 1999
What Big Ears They Have! Massive Attack's Remix Art ...
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. ...
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 ...
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: 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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
Massive Attack: Mezzanine (Virgin)
Review by Keith Cameron, New Musical Express, 18 April 1998
FLOORED GENIUS ...
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: 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. ...
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 ...
Massive Attack: London Arena, London
Live Review by Neil Mason, Melody Maker, 19 December 1998
THE VICTORIOUS BIG ...
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, ...
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 ...
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: 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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 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 ...
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, ...
Radiohead, Massive Attack: RDS Arena, Dublin
Live Review by Sean O'Hagan, The Guardian, 23 June 1997
Storming through the downpour ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
Interview by Stephen Dalton, The Scotsman, February 2003
3D talks to Stephen Dalton about war, melancholia and the duo's new 100th Window. ...
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: 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 ...
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... ...
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. ...
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 Attack: The Bristol Method
Profile and Interview by Will Hermes, Spin, June 1998
Trip-hop pioneers Massive Attack heat up the chill-out room ...
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: 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, ...
see also Tricky
see also Wild Bunch, The
see also Craig Armstrong
see also Horace Andy
see also Shara Nelson
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