It has been seven long years since Massive Attack released ‘100^th Window’ and hearing about their new CD was very exciting news indeed. ‘Heligoland’ is the duos fifth studio album to be recorded in a career which now spans more than twenty years.

The much anticipated new album was certainly worth the wait. It is always a bit of a concern that a band with such an impressive back catalogue will come up with a big, fat turkey and spoil things. Well, I can assure you there is absolutely nothing turkeyesque about this album whatsoever. And neither is there anything small. ‘Heligoland’ is massive in its production, massive in its ambition and massive in its complexity.

All of its songs are incredibly clever and have a huge amount of depth to them. The rhythms are totally unpredictable on many of the tracks and each time you listen to this album you will hear something different. The pair wanted to create something fresh with their skills and they have most definitely succeeded. It is a world away from ‘Blue Lines’ or ‘100^th Window’, but it is still unmistakably Massive Attack. There are numerous influences on ‘Heligoland’, but the Trip-Hop vibe still crops up throughout all ten songs.

‘Paradise Circus’ has been released as a single from the album and it is also one of the best tracks. It is slow, jazzy and extremely cool. The gorgeous vocals of Hope Sandoval (of Mazzy Star) are perfect for the song and give it a dreamy, lazy atmosphere.

Massive Attack are an extremely talented pair of musicians. Once again they have managed to go into the studio and come out with something which is truly original; and this is not the easiest of tasks in this ‘been there, done it all’ world of modern music.

One day last week I went out with one of my mates after a lot of arm twisting, we attended a Soft skill workshop. I still can’t believe that Lesley actually made me go to this, I mean you guys know me, you know that this is something that I wouldn’t normally do. Anyway, it turned out to actually be quite an entertaining day, I will post about it soon!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 16th, 2010 at 10:54 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.