In a new interview with The Guardian, Robert Del Naja, one of the masterminds behind Bristol trip hop collective Massive Attack, discusses the band’s seminal 1998 album Mezzanine and how they have developed their live shows into a multimedia visual art experience. The band are currently touring to celebrate Mezzanine‘s 21st anniversary, an album that cemented Massive Attack’s status as British alternative music legends with its significant critical and commercial success. However, the band’s third member Andy “Mushroom” Vowles (after Robert “3D” Del Naja and Grant “Daddy G” Marshall), left following the album’s release due to their new sonic direction. In the interview Del Naja reflected on the outcome, “[Mezzanine] was the end of our trio but… it projected us to greater things, I suppose. We’ve been through different things which have made us a bit raw, but we’ve managed to patch it up.”
Despite the album’s success, Del Naja’s memories lay primarily with the fight that caused Vowles to leave, and how Mezzanine probably wouldn’t have been as good as it was if it wasn’t for the fracturing of the band, “It wasn’t as simple as it used to be, because Blue Lines [their debut] was based on our collective history. Culturally and musically it was a big jam together. And then the second album [Protection] we’d become something, so we had a kind of routine and procedure. I felt that [with] Mezzanine, the procedure had to be ripped up, the rulebook had to be changed.”
Regardless of these negative memories, the new tour showcases the meticulous nature of Massive Attack’s musicianship as well as Del Naja’s collaborations with documentary filmmaker Adam Curtis. Behind the band pop culture images and war-torn news images from the past twenty years are projected onto giant screens. It is clear that Massive Attack’s provoking attitude is as strong as it has ever been. The band are silent between songs and Del Naja acknowledges how this contributes to the experience of the gig,”I’m happy for it to be unpredictable. That’s the point. There’s no sort of bants, no chatting because you kind of felt… Well, you wouldn’t go to a play and the actors turn around and say: ‘Are you all right?’ And there has to be some personal creative risk attached where you don’t know what’s going to happen.”
Del Naja went on to discuss why the band’s live performances have evolved into artistic spectacles, “This gig is as much ‘an album moment’ as an album was because everything has changed – the way we present ourselves, the way we share everything we do, the social experiment, the social experience. All that stuff is very different from when we put Mezzanine out.” Del Naja also had words about our current social climate, “I have total faith in the next generation. Looking at their response to climate change is really interesting and, again, that’s the power of social media at its best, to mobilise people. I think that’s a real positive. I think the negative is our generation and the generation above us that are still the problem because they don’t want to change.”
The Mezzanine XXI tour:
22/02/2019 – O2 Arena – London
24/02 – 3Arena – Dublin
1-2/03 – Steel Yard – Bristol
