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Publication Date: November 1994

Slumped across a settee in the lounge of Bristol’s prestigious Swallow Hotel, I’m fighting a running battle for Massive Attack’s attention. Conversation takes place between constantly changing orders for food and drink while the threesome—3-D, Mushroom and Daddy G—discuss pressing business: whether to enter the hotel’s competition and win two nights there, what sort of cheese their Welsh rarebit is constructed from and whether they can get a box for the Makita tournament.
Mushroom, usually the band’s most reticent member, picks up a large nylon folder containing copies of 3-D’s artwork (currently being collated for a show) and starts running his fingernails across its surface in scratch patterns: vava-va-vah-vah, vava-va-vah-vah…

“That’s the hardest scratch I ever learnt, I spent weeks trying to perfect it,” he muses aloud. Then suddenly everyone is involved. “No way, what about va-va-vah, va-va-vah?” interjects 3-D, snatching the folder for a demonstration. Daddy G, dressed from head to open-toed Birkenstocks in combat gear, levers his gangly frame up and demonstrates his own favourite. It may not be getting us anywhere but this is how Massive Attack work, bouncing ideas off each other, getting hopelessly sidetracked.

It’s three years since Massive Attack released their Top 20 debut Blue Lines, FOX’S second-best album of the ’90s so far, but the trio are not concerned about having kept people waiting. Neither are they worried that the stop-frame perfection of its follow-up, Protection, has coincided with the rise of the wild, hyper-kinetic sound of Jungle music.
“We’ve seen about ten music eras come and go,” reflects Daddy G. “It’s the same as ’91; when rave arrived we were in total contrast to what was going on. It makes for a good backdrop.”
“As the world speeds up, we slow down,” offers Mushroom epigrammatically, his head supported by a neck brace, the result of a particularly frantic game of Quasar.

It’s not so much a surprise that it’s taken Massive this long to get another album out, as a shock that it’s happened at all. Following the release of Blue Lines and that record’s half-a-million sales, they lost the passionate, soulful contribution of Shara Nelson, who left to forge a successful solo career. “I didn’t have a sudden attack of ego,” she said to VOX earlier lumped across a settee in the lounge of Bristol’s prestigious Swallow Hotel, I’m fighting a running battle for Massive Attack’s attention. Conversation takes place between constantly changing orders for food and drink while the threesome—3-D, Mushroom and Daddy G—discuss pressing business: whether to enter the hotel’s competition and win two nights there, what sort of cheese their Welsh rarebit is constructed from and whether they can get a box for the Makita tournament.

Mushroom, usually the band’s most reticent member, picks up a large nylon folder containing copies of 3-D’s artwork (currently being collated for a show) and starts running his fingernails across its surface in scratch patterns: vava-va-vah-vah, vava-va-vah-vah…
“That’s the hardest scratch I ever learnt, I spent weeks trying to perfect it,” he muses aloud. Then suddenly everyone is involved. “No way, what about va-va-vah, va-va-vah?” interjects 3-D, snatching the folder for a demonstration. Daddy G, dressed from head to open-toed Birkenstocks in combat gear, levers his gangly frame up and demonstrates his own favourite. It may not be getting us anywhere but this is how Massive Attack work, bouncing ideas off each other, getting hopelessly sidetracked.

It’s three years since Massive Attack released their Top 20 debut Blue Lines, FOX’S second-best album of the ’90’s so far, but the trio are not concerned about having kept people waiting. Neither are they worried that the stop-frame perfection of its follow-up, Protection, has coincided with the rise of the wild, hyper-kinetic sound of Jungle music.
“We’ve seen about ten music eras come and go,” reflects Daddy G. “It’s the same as ’91; when rave arrived we were in total contrast to what was going on. It makes for a good backdrop.”
“As the world speeds up, we slow down,” offers Mushroom epigrammatically, his head supported by a neck brace, the result of a particularly frantic game of Quasar.

It’s not so much a surprise that it’s taken Massive this long to get another album out, as a shock that it’s happened at all. Following the release of Blue Lines and that record’s half-a-million sales, they lost the passionate, soulful contribution of Shara Nelson, who left to forge a successful solo career. “I didn’t have a sudden attack of ego,” she said to VOX earlier this year, “but I wasn’t getting a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work.”

Nelson’s debut album, What Silence Knows, was nominated for a Mercury Prize, but it doesn’t receive any gold stars from the trio.
“She’s a brilliant songwriter,” says G, “but the general consensus was that her album didn’t come up to scratch. The production of her voice sounded really odd. We really worked on her vocals—that’s where Cameron [McVey] and Johnny [Dollar] came in.”

Subsequent to Nelson’s departure, manager McVey (the “Booga Bear” credited on Blue Lines) and producer Dollar also made their apologies, and are now hard at work with Neneh Cherry (McVey is married to her). “It was just the three of us left,” explains the hyperactive 3-D. “We had no manager or producer and the singers were scattered all over the place. A lot of bands in our position would have split.”

The insularity of Bristol helped shield them from the pressure. People rallied round generously: “Our friends used to take the piss out of us for doing an album. Then they were saying: ‘You’re finished aren’t you, where’s the new one then? That’s typical of Bristol music, you never get anywhere!”‘ laughs 3-D.
Such touching loyalty notwithstanding, Massive refuse to be governed by what Mushroom calls, to everyone’s amusement, “cheesy chart pressures”. The three moved at their own pace, spent money and time building their own studio and recruited new singers. In came Nigerian-born Nicolette and the bruised tones of Everything But The Girl’s Tracey Thom, whose lyrical thrust was preferred to another candidate, Cocteau twin Liz Fraser.

Bristolian Nellee Hooper, one-time member of The Wild Bunch (Massive in a previous incarnation), returned to produce the new album between stints with Bjork and Madonna. There was even an opportunity for G and 3-D to meet La Ciccione in LA, when she threw a party in celebration of the World Cup final. But they got so hammered after the match that they missed the bash, slept through the following day and had to leave before she got back into the studio with Hooper.

“It’s a shame we missed her but I don’t think Nellee wanted us to go anyway in case we compromised their working relationship in some way,” grins 3-D with a mischievous glint in his eye. However, the two sides did find time for a brief phone conversation.
“She seems like a nice person. We talked about each other’s albums, maybe doing a track in the future, but that was it.”
Massive testify that the new Madonna LP could have all the impact of Bjork’s Debut. “Her album sounds really interesting, dancey, but with that left-field sound that Nellee brings. Bjork’s actually written a track for it as well, which is great.”
“You just let the beans out of the can, boy!” admonishes G, bringing the possibility of further revelations to an end.

A single listen to Protection is enough to dispel any suggestion that it is simply Blue Lines II. Reflecting the contributions of its vocalists, the sound shifts perceptibly from dark, brooding ballads (Thom, Nicolette), through free-associating raps (Tricky, 3-D), live and direct dancehall chants (Horace Andy) to sculptured soundtracks. These elements are reflected once more in the careful packaging of Protection, whose sleeve is mysteriously dominated by a crossed knife and fork. 3-D, who started out as a graffitist, attempts to explain what it all means.

“We’ve had so many ideas over the years that we’ve forgotten what half of them signify,” he explains helpfully. “We collate everything and separate them all out. Last time we used so many images that it confused the issue. We had several images and no identifiable faces on the front cover. We’re interested in symbols. Because we didn’t ever want to be a fixed group with the same line-up, we went for this branding imagery as if it was a product. So every time you saw the flame or the matchbook you’d recognise it as us. If you look at life today, it’s dominated by logos. I bought some cheese the other day which had the EEC stars on it. It didn’t say what sort of cheese it was anywhere. It was just Eurocheese.”

“Maybe that’s what was used in the Welsh rarebit,” suggests Mushroom, easing up the large yellow slab that sits on a neat square of toast. With that, the conversation takes another no-hand-signals left-tum, and the trio head off tangentially into the sunset.

Written By Mike Pattenden