Question 1:

Q 1. Why are Massive Attack so slow to make albums? What’s the holdup?

Along with the general music press and their fans, Massive Attack have earned a reputation of taking their time when it comes to releasing their studio albums. They share their ’slow boil’ music making process with perhaps their most famous Bristol comtemparies, Portishead, who in fairness to Massive Attack, took 11 years to follow up their 2nd album finally in 2008. Massive Attack have’nt had gaps quite that large in their catalogue but still noticeable enough. 3D has commented on their lackadaisically appraoch to music as being both a by-product of the very nature of Massive Attack as more of a loosely defined project than a full fledged band and also an element of growing up in Bristol, which has been described by himself as being Quote - “the graveyard of ambition”. the nebous nature of Massive Attack, what with people coming and going and typically always some major crisis occuring between albums, has also has also contributed to the slow feed of albums over Massive Attack’s career. Quote - 3D on why they take their time between albums - “If a thing’s worth doing, it’s worth doing slowly” [Mojo Magazine - June 2002]
An interesting observation, but probably not intentional pattern to their album releases, is that each subsequent album has taken one more calendar year to appear since the last one. This pattern is evident between Blue Lines to Protection (a gap of 3 years), from Protection to Mezzanine (a gap of 4 years), from Mezzanine to 100th Window (a gap of 5 years) and now from 100th Window to the due in 2009 ‘LP5′ (a gap of 6 years).

Q 2. Why did Massive Attack choose to release a ‘Best Of’ album, Collected?

The release of Collected was in large part a stalling tactic on Massive Attack’s part to placate their record label EMI/Virgin from breathing down their neck pressing for a follow-up album to 100th Window. When the idea to put out this ‘Best Of’ album concept, was broached to them by their manager in late 2005, the band realised it would be a perfect opportunity to simultaenously keep their record label off their backs while at the same time taking stock of their career of the last 15 years as an major label artist. It could have even been seen as a cleansing act, to present and package their older work in a new unique package, and thusly clearing the way for work to begin properly on the fifth album which had been slow to non-exisent in 2004/2005, what with pursuing film scoring projects and constructing their new base of operations - 100 Suns Studios.
And lastly, by doing the ‘Best Of’ album there and then and getting it out of the way allowed them full creative control over it, rather than leaving it for years to come in the future when potentially EMI/Virgin might have had full diseration on how to present Massive Attack’s ‘Best Of’. While most ‘Best Of’ compilations by other bands usually contain one new song to entice long-term fans (in Collected’s case, Live With Me), Massive Attack fully invested themselves into going the extra mile with how they would present their ‘Best Of’ to the fans, with 3D once again coming up with the artwork like any proper Massive Attack album, a DVD of virtually all their promo videos housed together and of big interest for all the major fans of the band, an 2nd disc of rarities and outtakes. So while Collected was envisioned mostly as a stopgap measure until the next studio album, Massive Attack were able to make it that little bit more special for their fans with the extra bit of thought and care. Not to mention the excuse for a year long world tour that would proceed Collected’s launch.
Quote - Daddy G on their reasons for doing a ‘Best Of’ album - “We’re not really our record company’s ideal band, financially,” chuckles Daddy G. “Yeah, we’ve sold nine million albums in 15 years, but if you break that down, it’s not very much, is it? But it was also a way of putting in a full stop, collect our thoughts and think about moving forward.” [Sunday Times - March 2006]
Quote - 3D on their reasons for doing a ‘Best Of’ album - “It gives us the opportunity to expose stuff that’s been long on the shelf. The whole process of putting this together has been about the new things: the artwork, the videos, the tour.” [Rolling Stone - April 2006]

Q 3. In what studios have Massive Attack recorded their albums over the years?

When Cameron McVey became Massive Attack’s first manager when he took them on after the demise of the Wild Bunch he invited the trio of 3D, Daddy G and Mushroom along with co-producer Jonny Dollar (who was a friend of McVey’s to his home-come-studio in London, UK. It is here predominately that Blue Lines would be produced, with the mix overseen at Matrix Studios, also in London. For Protection, Massive Attack mixed it between the Wild Bunch studio in London and several smaller studios in Bristol, including the Coach House, which is where they would meet Neil Davidge, their future co-producer. The album was also mixed at Olympic Studios in London with Mark “Spike” Stent assisting the mix on his major album production. Since then he has gone on to mix for the likes of Madonna, Bjork and Massive Attack once again for their subsequent albums. Mezzanine and 100th Window would be produced mostly at Christchurch studios in Bristol again mixed at Olympic with “Spike”.
In 2004, an ambition of both 3D’s and Neil Davidge’s was reached when they bought and converted an old industrial warehouse on the outskrts of Bristol into their own private studio and named it 100 Suns. This helped facilitated Massive Attack’s move into producing feature length soundtracks around this time as well. The reasons for having their own studio was so they could stop renting out studios and be more free creatively than before. 100 Suns even has its own mixing facilty and it is envisioned that “Spike” (who is their defacto album mixer) will be able to mix any future Massive Attack albums here rather than going to London for it. You can read more about 100 Suns studio in this revealing interview in the Scans section.

Q 4. Who does the artwork for each of the albums? What are they meant to depict?

3D has always had a high stake in the visual identity of band since their conception. His early roots growing up in Bristol, UK in the 1980’s as a graffiti artist has formed the basis of all his artwork since, as part of Massive Attack or independently. Certainly on Blue Lines and Protection the graffiti aesthetic and subculture is pretty well defined when leafing through the album artwork. From Mezzanine onwards he has worked with a visual designer called Tom Hingston which led to incorporating a new approach to the album artwork which was based more on photographic manlipulations (i.e metallic structures, shattered glass etc…). Another ethos of 3D’s which formed the design of each of their albums was not to actually have any photos of the bandmembers themselves on the front covers of any of the albums, believing that Massive Attack should be an entity not focused on the people but the music and visuals behind them. Quote 3D on why they don’t have their faces on the front covers of their albums - “The thing with Massive Attack as a project is it’s meant to be ambiguous. The whole point was the ability it had to develop and evolve and change without being firmly attached to the faces or personalities within the group.” [Venue Magazine - January 2003]
Here’s what the album covers are meant to depict or at least their inspiration:

Blue Lines - 3D self confessed that he basically stole the idea for using the inflammable material logo, which was featured on the front cover of Blue Lines, from 1970’s punk rockers, Stiff Little Fingers, who were one of 3D’s favourite bands growing up. Stiff Little Fingers had already used the inflammable material logo for the front cover of their seminal 1979 debut album, the aptly titled “Inflammable Material”. Stiff Little Fingers would feature on the bill for Massive Attack’s Meltdown festival in 2008, undoubtfully because of 3D’s appreciation for the band in his youth and partly to repay the favour for them giving him the inspiration for inflammable material logo for Blue Lines, which is also universally seen now as the defining symbol of Massive Attack.
Protection - The figure holding the knife and fork on the front cover of Protection is that of a Eurochild, which was an original design of 3D’s. The Eurochild figure is meant to represent Europe (or the E.U.) and its different disparate elements attempting to come together to form a unified whole amid all the choas and confusion.
Mezzanine - The metallic scab beatle featured promiently on the front cover of Mezzanine was not a single beatle shape but composed of many different metallic pieces which were then arranged into a beatle shape before being photographed. The unsettleing result is meant to suggest the tortuous and fractured experience had in composing Mezzanine which had been well documented.
100th Window - The shattered glass man motif was meant to suggest the fragility and delicateness of the human soul. How even though we may put up alot of precautions to protect ourselves, one stray mishap can lead to a person’s downfall. An almost full sized human replicia was made out of clear silica glass and then with high speed cameras from several different angles filming, were blown apart with a bullet shot out of a aperture gun. They also did the same thing, only this time with a yellow and blue coloured glass man for the front covers of the singles for Special Cases and Butterfly Caught respectively.
Collected - The nickname for the front cover of Collected is known as the ‘Ballistic Rose’, because at first sight, it appears to be a flower, but closer inspection reveals the presence of more sinister elements including weapons, a snake and a skull. Quote - Tom Hingston on the ‘Ballistic Rose’ - “With this album being a ‘Best of’, the band were keen to avoid the cover image feeling retrospective. Whilst the imagery should be both iconic and beautiful, it was important that it should be something new.” [Creative Review - April 2006]

Q 5. Which of Massive Attack’s albums would be the highest selling worldwide? On the same note, which one is considered the best, critcially?

No reliable precise album sales information can be found for Massive Attack’s albums. It is worth mentioning though that at the time of Collected’s release in 2006, the official PR for it indicated that Massive Attack had sold over 9 million albums worldwide. Both Mezzanine and 100th Window entered the UK chart at #1 each ont heir debuts, but for only one week only. Massive Attack’s singles have never done particularly stellar with their highest UK entry being #10 for Teardrop on it’s first week of release. Massive Attack have always been seen as an “albums band”, so the lack of singles success for them is not concidered particlaurly worrisome. Mezzanine is still to this day the biggest selling album and is probably the album that gained them the most fans compared to any other album. Not only did that album focus on a shift in their music from lighter and laid-back to more dark and abrasive sounds, it also produced a shift in the band’s fanbase. Fans who had been introduced to Massive Attack through Mezzanine, initially (and some still do) have a problem with the earlier albums, perfering the darker textures of Mezzanine and 100th Window to Blue Lines and Protection. There are also fans who favour the lighter side and think that Massive Attack abandonned their roots which made them great after Protection.
As for critical acclaim from the music press, Mezzanine and especially Blue Lines get the lion’s share of the praise - Blue Lines for its genuinely groundbreaking fusion of hip-hop, soul and reggae and Mezzanine for revamping the band’s sound to a more post-punk fashion but still in a logical way in keeping with their previous albums of taking disparate elements and making it into a convincing whole. Protection, with quite a few reviewers suffered somewhat at the time of its release from the precieved ’sophomore album slump’ but today is regarded as a well-executed (if not as groundbreaking as it’s predecessor) follow-up. 100th Window had a very mixed reception with the professional critics and the long-term fans alike - some believed it was a very credible foray into intricate precision electonica with a more ambient flaovour to it while others completely derided it for Massive Attack further abandonning their soundsystem roots, which was again compounded by 100th Window being percieved to be a 3D solo album only put out under the Massive Attack banner for commericial reasons.
Quote - 3D on Massive Attack’s album sales and their critical reception - “Mezzanine continues to dramatically outsell Blue Lines, even though Blue Lines has been recognized as our greatest achievement, (in inverted commas), that album [Mezzanine] has been the most commercially well recieved and the most popular in that sense. I guess 100th Window sold about as many as Protection, but the record sales don’t really add up to what people percieve what the albums represent and what relevance they have. They’re very different, aren’t they?” [Collected EPK - March 2006]

Q 6. How many films have Massive Attack scored lately and how many of these have recieved proper releases?

The only soundtrack project which recieved a full proper release as an album was Danny The Dog, coicidentally or not the only soundtrack project to actually use the name ‘Massive Attack’ to promote itself. The one major ommission from that release is the film’s end credits song, Aftersun. Afterwards, only the low budget British film, Bullet Boy would receive any other kind of release, albeit only as a digital download on Itunes. Initially, Massive Attack had desired to release the Bullet Boy E.P on a physical release such as CD and Vinyl but their record label, Virgin Records over-ruled them. A month or so before the Bullet Boy E.P was to released on Itunes, positive reviews from advanced screenings of the Bullet Boy film, made Virgin Records change their mind about a physical release but unfortunately, there was not enough time to produce the physical units in time for a simultaneous Itunes release, so the idea was scrapped.
Since these two films, Massive Attack under several guises (100 Suns, One Point Six and just plain Robert Del Naja & Neil Davidge) have scored a number of films, with none of them recieving any kind of release, physical or digital yet. These films include In Prison My Whole Life (original score + Snoop Dogg collaboration, Calling Mumia) Gomorra, (end credit song - Herculaneum), Battle In Seattle (original score), 44 Inch Chest (original score) and Push (original score - Neil Davidge solo sans Robert Del Naja). The reason why none of these film’s scores have been credited officially to Masive Attack is that the band want to establish themsleves as film composers away from the having to rely on the brand name of Massive Attack and to keep the two seperate from each other. The only reason why Danny The Dog went under the name ‘Massive Attack’, was because the filmmakers insisted on it.

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