No Introductions Necessary - Massive Attack

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“How do you produce Damon” ruminates Grant Marshall aka Daddy G when asked about the stellar line-up of the forthcoming Massive Attack album.

“You kindly ask Damon. You say ‘Damon, we’ve got a track that we want you to do and here are the lyrics, would you like to have a look at the lyrics?’ How do you tell Damon Albarn you’ve got lyrics for him? He just kind of kindly refuses and it takes him about a day to make up his thing for the song and its recorded the next day; he’s a genius, an absolute genius.”

Say Bristol and the first name most will think of after Banksy is Massive Attack, which is kind of ironic seeing as the anonymous street artist was probably listening to ‘Blue Lines’ while sharpening his pencils for art class. A cultural reference point far more than music to be listened to through the haze of a spliff strewn ashtray, the trip-hop pioneers are back after a six year sabbatical to face the critics with ‘Splitting The Atom’ an EP which says Grant is “a good but not fair reflection” of their fifth studio album.

“We’re fully aware that there’s this perception of something great happening whenever we put something out, not in a big headed way, only ‘cos that’s what people always say. So we’re always quite tentative of how people are going to receive it but we just do what we do and hope people like it.”

It’s well documented that since the musical shift triggered by ‘Unfinished Sympathy’, Massive Attack have endured a tumultuous, tense and at times fragile existence. So much so that after ‘Mezzanine’ Daddy G took a step away, turning his back on their last studio album ‘100th Window’.

“I needed to clear my head. Also I was having a kid for the first time and it was… Wow.” says Grant “There just wasn’t a lot of good energy going on at that time between myself and D (Robert Del Naja aka 3D), so we distanced ourselves from each other. That’s what really shows in that album, there’s a lot of distance, its heavily drawn on D’s ideas… one sided.”

Despite two of the founding members responsible for Bristol’s defining sound back in the studio and on tour together (“reunited you might say”) Grant is reticent, as guarded as he is open about the past and equally aloof when it comes to discussing their fifth album, rumoured to be titled ‘Weather Underground’ and why its taken so long to get to this stage:

“It’s a case of that perfectionist thing and Jesus Christ, trying to work with D is unbelievable because the guy is such a perfectionist, he never knows when to let go” laughs Grant “The only time there’s any acrimony is when we’re in the studio. When we’re on tour we seem to be alright, the pressures off because we’ve done what we’ve had to do.”

Highly praised by critics and peers alike for their collaborations with other artistes, the new album, which features among others Tunde Adebimpe, Hope Sandoval, Guy Garvey and Damon Albarn, is truly inspired even by Massive Attacks standards. But talk of the new album, its preceding EP and the progression and direction of the Massive Attack sound once again prompts an underlying aloofness that fleetingly harks back to the past:

“Its more of a move from 100th Window, there wasn’t much light at the end of the tunnel with that album, whereas, there’s a bit more light shed on this one and a bit more soul put into it… I hate the word soul by the way. But also we don’t necessarily believe in albums as a format anymore, it’s just a collection of songs that you put in place, but that shouldn’t necessarily be the album.”

Long regarded by many as genre sparking innovators, this, their twenty first year under the Massive Attack guise has been vindicated with the Ivor Novello Award for Outstanding Contribution To British Music, an award viewed by the erstwhile DJ as “a great accolade to be recognised and accepted into the special club.” But despite Grant fast approaching fifty and with many fans that use ‘Blue Lines’ as a safe dinner party classic not too far behind him, their current tour points to anything but a band whose reputation is kept intact by a handful of fond memories.

“I look out into the audience and I see a lot of young kids. Its kind of funny, I met some kids the other day and they were seventeen or eighteen and had been brought along by their parents; they’ve come along and been blown away by us and its exhilarating to see that. The fact that we’re playing six or seven new tracks up front is quite exciting and slowly but surely people are getting it and enjoying it.”

Cross-generational they might be, but make no mistake, Massive Attack aren’t quite ready to be viewed as family friendly golden oldies:

“I hate the sound of that, it makes us sound like Status Quo or something!”