![]() We’ve been around technology since the very beginning, and we’re very keenly aware of how technology shapes the way we behave in the studio and as human beings outside of there. Without loops and samples we never would have made a single record. In terms of technology defining us and our behavior, it’s really relevant to us as a band who was defined by technology. One of the through-lines in Adam Curtis’s documentaries is how information is shaped and how it then shapes us.Ībsolutely. That was always going to disrupt the peace. I felt that this time around, it was also relevant to mine from our punk history and new wave history and to force these different cultural points into the studio. Where we’d been, before that, had been soul and funk and reggae, and that was a legitimate part of what we were. I was forcing completely new ideas into the studio. The tension on that record was inevitable because I was determined to change the fabric of the band. Without that tension, would the album have been as durable? The band was falling apart as you were making the album. And now it’s about the same thing in a way, the limbo between what is real and what isn’t real. For me it’s a bit of the limbo between the night and the day. “Mezzanine” was about that space where things weren’t real. What we remember of the past, how much of that is real? What is real now - our sense of what we make of reality - and what is information? If we no longer trust what we used to think were reliable sources, what becomes of reality? We’re examining the audience, we’re examining ourselves, we’re examining the past, we’re questioning the past and what we believe to be true. Now this self-examination has got a much wider arc beam, if you will. In an honest assessment of it, “Mezzanine” was very much a self-examination of the way the band was at the time: the dysfunction of the band, the way our lives had changed, the place we came from. But the tour imagery takes on a lot more: information and disinformation, war, surveillance, consumption, persuasion. This is much more of a collage of then and since.Ī lot of the songs on the album were about the classic pop subject: love troubles. When we played “Mezzanine” originally, we didn’t do that. And to look at the historical past in which the album was written, and to examine the time between then and now, and then create arguments about where we’ve been and where we are now. We could turn those into tracks with which we could create a piece of art. What went into it musically - to use those reference points and extract them, in order to expose the organs and limbs, the samples and the loops and the things that went into the album. The idea was to revisit the album, but instead of just wallowing in the past, to actually take the past and treat it forensically. I thought that this was an opportunity to use something which was familiar and create a sense of subtle disorientation at the same time. The intention of the show was to take a second look back at the past and re-examine ourselves and re-examine the idea of nostalgia, which is actually a quite powerful emotion. You’ve been calling the “Mezzanine” tour a “ghost story.” Can you explain that? #Massive attack series#The tracks were also so richly atmospheric that they found a continuing afterlife on film and TV soundtracks “Teardrop” became the theme for the series “House.” When “Mezzanine” appeared, its songs hovered in their own cavernous voids: at once dynamic and methodical, implacable and precarious, urgent yet stubbornly unhurried. The set list includes songs - from the Velvet Underground, Pete Seeger, the Cure and Ultravox - that were sampled or quoted on “Mezzanine.” And the stage production, featuring films that Del Naja collaborated on with the documentarian and essayist Adam Curtis, connects the album’s solitary, inward-looking songs to larger issues: power, technology, mechanisms of deception and control. Massive Attack is rejoined by two guest singers who appeared on “Mezzanine”: Elizabeth Fraser of the Cocteau Twins and the reggae songwriter Horace Andy. That mandate turned into an international tour concluding Thursday and Friday at Radio City Music Hall in New York that probes and expands on the album. And I made it quite clear that there was only one point in playing it live, and that would be to use the opportunity to do something completely new and complete the cycle.” “The question was asked, would we play it live. It’s a generational thing,” said Robert Del Naja, the band’s leader, by phone from Washington, D.C. Since it was released in 1998, Massive Attack’s third album, “Mezzanine,” has endured as a bleak milestone. ![]()
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