Massive Attack

Massive Attack

NEW VIEW

Massive Attack Draw Back the Curtains on 100th Window
At the dawn of the '90s, the Bristol, England, collective known as Massive Attack essentially invented trip-hop -- that dark dance-music hybrid that joined house, techno, reggae, and soul, sparking the careers of, among others, Tricky, Shara Nelson, and Everything But the Girl and paving the way for Portishead. Since Massive released their pathbreaking debut, Blue Lines, in 1991, the trio have delivered an album every four years or so. What's different about their fourth, 100th Window, is a drastic personnel change: Absent are original members Grant "Daddy G" Marshall and Andrew "Mushroom" Vowles, leaving Robert "3D" Del Naja to collaborate with Neil Davidge, who co-produced 1998's Mezzanine. Unchanged is the band's overall sound: a paranoid buzz peppered with intriguing vocals. Quieter and gentler than its predecessors, 100th Window twines eerie Middle Eastern strings into its sinewy grooves and is textured by vocals from Sinéad O'Connor, reggae legend Horace Andy (a Massive regular), and Del Naja himself. Barnes & Noble.com's Lily Moayeri visited Del Naja in an overheated room at Christchurch Studios, which house Massive's studio and their label, Melankolic, and queried him about the group's lineup changes and 100th Window's labored genesis.

Barnes & Noble.com: Why is it just you on 100th Window?

Robert Del Naja: Mushroom left because he wasn't into what we were doing. He's a purist and wanted to do a soul/funk/R&B thing. The thing about Massive Attack was mixing things. Making music in one way only would be against the meaning. [Daddy G] had a baby. He hates being in the studio. At which point do I wait and say, Okay, mate, when you're ready, we'll do the next Massive Attack album?

B&N.com: Is it okay for you to call yourself Massive Attack when you're the only person involved from the original lineup?

RDN: Massive Attack was meant to be ambiguous. It was never meant to be a band. You took it at face value for what it was. However it came packaged, you would still see it as a Massive Attack album. It wasn't important how it was made or who was working. The whole point of the band was that it would evolve without people saying what or who was involved.

B&N.com: Where you more involved in the studio aspect than the others in the past?

RDN: Me or Mushroom would be more driven, trying to get an idea through the process. We were never all in the room together; [it was] always at different times, collaborating with producers or singers. It was never, Oh there's three of you, now there's one. You don't really notice it because in the day I might [have seen] Mushroom and G twice.

B&N.com: It seems you were separating gradually.

RDN: I like to romantically think of a time where we were all in one room saying, This is the future, but there was never a time like that. There was always a problem, especially with three people: two against one. It was always a power struggle, selfish people with a serious amount of stubbornness trying to have some control over the group, and it was taken away from you the next minute.

B&N.com: What is 100th Window referring to?

RDN: It's about contradictions in human beings. It's about wanting to look into everyone else's lives, but we want to keep ourselves locked up and private. It's from an Internet privacy book by Charles Jennings [Hundredth Window: Protecting Your Privacy and Security in the Age of the Internet], which is about the idea that you can't secure your world. If you have a system, you always leave something unlocked: Shut all your windows and protect all your parts, but the 100th one, that's the one they get in from.

B&N.com: What was your reasoning behind the vocalists you chose?

RDN: We've always picked people who've got personality. It not just about the ability; it's about what they bring with that; it's about what they're like as a person. This record -- more than Mezzanine, definitely -- is a bit more soul searching, more honesty, more personal, more emotional. Mezzanine was quite removed from itself because of the dysfunctional nature of the band. No one wanted to talk about it, no one wanted to get deep into any issues because it was messy. [With] this one, there's more contact, whether it's talking about yourself, or searching yourself, or whether it's communicating. Sinéad was an important aspect of that because she brings a certain honesty to it. This time around I went on a bit of a mission to make Horace not sound like Horace. He has got such a strong history, it's a challenge to abstract it again.

B&N.com: What was the process of recording 100th Window like?

RDN: We did a whole album with Lupine Howl [ex-members of Spiritualized], and recorded about five days' worth of music if you played it back to back. [We thought] we'll take these small ideas in the studio and see what happens. We tried to get through it and break it down, and at the heart of it, the root of it all, there was nothing to be found. That was what we were doing between 2000 and Christmas 2001: getting nowhere slowly. It's a dysfunctional group of people. When you spend time in the studio trying to get through, trying to deal with each other's personalities, it takes a long time.

B&N.com: Do you find it easier to work without the others around?

RDN: With Mezzanine, we went through a mechanical process to get it done because it couldn't be personal because no one wanted it to be. It worked for that record. For this record, especially when it all fell apart, it was like, piss or get off the pot. Everything was recorded very quickly, not with that intention because it was actually abstracted from what it was meant to be, but all the things that are down on tape were very real and happened very quickly, very honestly. There was a freedom there, just doing it without having to go through a process, which was even harder.

February 19, 2003