As more and more re-issues, best of compilations (the stars of this review’s own Collected is no exception) and single tracks keep cropping up on the internet to be half-listened to while you open up another tab in firefox and develop some sort of attention deficit disorder, bold statements like ‘there’s no such thing as an album anymore’ aren’t so much bold as an unfortunate actuality.
Almost TWENTY years ago Massive Attack released the groundbreaking ‘Blue Lines‘, a full on album that everyone has or should have listened to at least five times all the way through without stopping but maybe while doing something else like cleaning. The albums that followed in the same decade were just as worthy of your time and attention, then pow pow here come the 00s and aside from 100th Window which wasn’t fully Massive Attack anyway; it looked as though these Bristol-based beatniks were another victim of the music scene becoming increasingly temporary and a bit rubbish.
Or hopefully a ten year break is just what they needed for LP5, which, untitled or not, carries so much hope of being a proper album that, while not totally absent from the last decade, has been missed. An LP. A fully Massive Attack, Del Naja, Danny G and some speculated awesome contributors (Damon Albarn, Guy Garvey, Damon Albarn, Tunde Adebimpe, Damon Albarn and hopefully Damon Albarn) LP. Maybe this will be one of the albums that spur the idea of the album to make a comeback? Please?
Who knows. But the out-of-fucking-nowhere Splitting The Atom EP is a damn good teaser. The title track has mad ominous keys that carry tweaked influences from both Gorillaz’ Demon Days and Portishead’s Third but remain ultimately and unquestionably Massive Attack. Bulletproof Love serves as a minimal-tech platform for Guy Garvey of Elbow to sound great and a little Kid A (the track, not the album) on before a huge and unmistakably Blue Lines era style crescendo in the middle that gives me shivers and hope that LP5 may just be worth the ten year wait.
Stanley.