Heat Miser
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26th September 1994
03:39
Backward Sucking - The final track from the Mad Professor remix album No Protection. Available only on this release.
Suck Me Up Dub - This remix also from the the Mad Professor was released two years after the No Protection remix album on a electronic music compilation called “Foundations: Coming Up From The Streets”. Whilst similar in style with the Backward Sucking remix of the song, this version contains some notable differences. The first being the use of Tracey Thorn’s distorted echoey vocals which do not appear to be to taken from any of the three songs Tracey Thorn released in conjunction with Massive Attack. The other difference is that this remix contains a sample coincidentally or not, from the Isaac Hayes song “Ike’s Mood”, which was also used by Massive Attack themselves at the very end of One Love.
Heatmiser 2 - This version is soleley produced by Craig Armstrong, even though it still contains writing credits for Massive Attack. It strips the original song back to a very basic albeit beautiful piano track, which is the theme of the album it appears on: Craig Armstrong’s “Piano Works”, which features piano only instrumentals of earlier Craig Armstrong works.
Written by Andrew Vowles, Robert Del Naja, Grant Marshall, Nelle Hooper and Marius De Vries
Produced by Andrew Vowles, Robert Del Naja, Grant Marshall and Nellee Hooper
Piano by Craig Armstrong
Drums by Rob Merril
See Protection info section for further credit details by clicking here.
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Instrumental
Normally concidered an instrumental song by the vast majority, even though Daddy G’s voice does provide the repeating heavy breathing loop heard throughout the track. It is also interesting to note that 3D provides brand new lyrics to the track perhaps in an effort to ’spice it up’ in all live renditions of the song. The lyric section directly below contains 3D’s live lyrics to the song, even though he has been known to vary the lyrics slighly from night to night.
Whilst not much information exists exactly on the origins of Heat Miser (or its sister songs, Weather Storm and Sly), it was the direct result of Massive Attack’s partnership with with the up and coming film composer Craig Armstrong and their desire to produce a song with a very filmic theme or quality to it. This urge to produce film score would naturally lead to Massive Attack’s involvement with the Danny The Dog and Bullet Boy soundtrack ten years later.
The heavy breathing heard throughout the song is that of Daddy G.
This is the only Massive Attack song to feature Marius De Vries on writing duties. His main role was that of programmer on the album Protection.
The drummer on Heat Miser, Rob Merril would also likewise never work on another Massive Attack song again, but also strangely enough according to Discogs, would never feature again in any musical capacity again on any recording ever again.
Heat Miser was an almost permanent member of the live setlist from the 1995 tour until the end of the Mezzanine tour in 1999. Since then however, it has appeared very rarily on setlists with its only appearance being a handful of dates at the beginning of the European leg of the 2006 tour. This was due to the fact that Horace Andy was unavailable for those dates, which forced Massive Attack to improvise their setlist a little bit more than usual.
As noted above, 3D provides new lyrics to the live version where as the original album version was a simple instrumental. Some of these live lyrics which would have probably been written around 1994/1995, would end up as being apart of the lyrics to Inertia Creeps.
On some occasions during the 1995/1996, Craig Armstrong would accompany Massive Attack live on stage and play the piano part of Heat Miser.
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