A Conversation with Massive Attack’s Robert Del Naja – HuffPost 10.15.10

Mike Ragogna: Usually your projects are almost like a song cycle. What was the approach while making your new album Heligoland?

Robert Del Naja: This album started off, as usual, being somewhat of a sonic exercise, and then I realized halfway through that there were quite a lot of fights to be had between myself and Grant (Marshall) and myself and Neil Davidge in terms of what I wanted to do sonically and what they probably didn’t want to do sonically. So, I kind of made a U-turn halfway through, and decided to strip it all back and make it very acoustic, and very much expose all the instruments, and even make the music slave to the songs. So, it was more about the songs than the music, in a sense.

MR: Would it be right to call Heligoland an “organic” project?

RDN: Yeah, possibly. I think I was trying to just simplify things, take a lot of the layers away, and make it more about the relationship between the songs and the necessary amount of sounds as opposed to creating a more complex arrangement. It became more organic during the process.

MR: What went into choosing guest artists for this project?

RDN: A lot of it was–again, I’m going to use the word “organic” because it had that approach. Hooking up with Damon Albarn…in one sense, there’s obviously a history there; hooking up with Tim Goldsworthy, there’s a history there as well; and hooking up with Martina Topley-Bird the same thing. Guy Garvey is a kind of a friend of mine in recent times. The exception was Hope Sandoval who we’ve never worked with before. G sent her the track almost anonymously in the post, you know? Everything else was very much a process of working with people we knew and have relationships with.

MR: When most artists record their albums, there are usually a couple of songs that pop out and make you go, “Wow, that turned out fantastic.” Did you have any of those moments with this record?

RDN: It’s hard to say. The funny thing is that some of this is the bones of another album, which we sort of scrapped. The original album was Weather Underground, which was meant to be finished in ’08, but it got discarded. We took some of the skeletal remains with us, and some stuff was written brand new on the spot. I think those moments of writing on the spot were good because going over Damon Albarn’s place, working with Damon and doing things very spontaneously–compulsively even–that was good fun. Especially after coming out of the crisis of scrapping an album and feeling a little bit out of sorts, that would be the closest I can think of to an “ah ha” moment. (laughs)

MR: That’s exactly what I meant, yeah. Please, say more.

RDN: It’s probably in the sense of the approach. I think we probably got bogged down in the studio over the years in Bristol with various personalities, and personality issues and approaches, finding a way to work. Going to a new environment and doing things very spontaneously again was almost like going back in time to when you just did things quickly, had less equipment, didn’t have infinite computing power, and you had to make things work with very few tools.

MR: Can you tell me why the album was scrapped?

RDN: A couple of things–I’d been working in one place and G was working in another. Neil, my co-writer and co-producer at the time, had been working with me on a lot of films at the time, and I think we kind of got sick of each other. There was no real cohesion to it, and we’d taken it on the road for a good four months. We did a lot of gigs, and it was good fun. But I think at the end of that, I felt that it almost had served its time and done its thing, and it had no reason to really exist anymore–the moment had passed. So, it was starting again, going to Damon, going to see Tim in New York, that made things feel slightly different. You know, G and I don’t sit in the studio together often, so there’s going to be an amount of the guys and I in the studio just pushing it together to make a shape out of it, which is the point that I realized all the sonic battles that I’d been having in the past, trying to get ideas across, were pointless. So, I decided to simplify things and start again.

MR: You’ve worked with a lot of artists at this point, as this is your fifth studio album, right?

RDN: Yes.

MR: So, you’re veterans.

RDN: I guess so, definitely.

MR: As a music vet, what is your advice for new artists that are trying to come into the field at this point?

RDN: Well, I guess everything is falling apart in the music industry, in a certain sense, and deflating and declining, and I’m thinking it’s going to leave a lot of space in the background where the original structures used to stand, where people can start to create their own movements, their own music. I think there’s a lot of impulse with today’s day and age to go get deals still, and I think things have changed to where you don’t have to sign to a record company anymore–you can sign to a fizzy drink company or to a supermarket. I think there’s as much opportunity out there, more than ever, to do things a lot more independently than there ever was. We don’t have to follow the traditional channels anymore because a lot of that system is way in decline and dying every day, and it means that there’s a lot more space for people to do things in their own way. I’d encourage people to look at all the alternatives. Now, you can make it in the industry on very little equipment, and you can transmit it instantly as well as share it instantly. There’s a lot more opportunity to develop your ideas without interference, you know?

MR: Right, and to play live.

RDN: Well, playing live, again, there is an amazing amount of opportunity to play live. People seem to be going to gigs a lot more these days. Maybe that’s a consequence of the age of unlimited internet. We’re people. Even though you can share everything electronically or anonymously, in a sense, everything is packaged into naughts and ones as opposed to being little boxes. You kind of tend to want to feel the human touch by going to a gig, being involved, and engaging on a physical level.

MR: Yeah, that does seem to be what the missing element is when you’re living and dying with internet promotion, marketing, and presence. Really, despite “live” blogging, etc., you can’t get the live element.

RDN: Exactly. Ironically, Massive Attack started off in its infancy as an electronic outfit. We didn’t really go big on promotion and we didn’t promote ourselves as personalities. It was all about the art and the music, and it was only after Mezzanine that we really started hitting the touring and started to head into the more physical world of presenting out music and communicating it.

MR: You’re going to be on a North American tour soon with Thievery Corporation, right?

RDN: Yes.

MR: Where is it taking you?

RDN: It’s taking us, I guess, to a lot of the cities we’ve been to before, and a lot of the ones we haven’t. It’s always exciting, you know? It’s very demographically and geographically different from the U.K. and Europe, so it’s always an eye-opener for us Europeans.

MR: When you perform live, what can people expect to be seeing and hearing?

RDN: I think, for me, it’s always about the opportunity to engage in everything that’s happening around us. Musically, I try to present what is happening presently. Even if you’re playing some stuff from the past or you’re playing something no one’s heard before, you’re playing it for the moment, and you try an create a set that feels like it’s about now, whether or not there’s a history attached to it at all. So, we rearrange tracks and replay them with different instruments and different sounds. At the same time, visually, for me, it’s always been very exciting because I came to it as a visual artist. In the information and communication age, I think the saturation or bombardment of information creates contradictions to where you’re surrounded by information and what you can and cannot do. Trying to present that on stage, dealing with issues locally and internationally until you’re completely surrounded by it–because that’s how we take information now, tons of it at once–how we process it is very strange and different. I guess our brains have been rewired. I think it’s great to be able to present that as a part of the show.

MR: Wow, beautifully said.

RDN: Thank you, I’ve been practicing that all of five minutes.

MR: (laughs) Is there any song on Heligoland that sort of sums up its major ideas and pulls them into one song?

RDN: Not really. Can I just say that when I start a statement like that, normally, it’s sort of just like putting a little boat out into a lake and hoping I get to the other side. I start off chucking words at you, and I’m not quite sure if it’s actually going to make any sense, but in the end, if I succeed, then it’s an absolute miracle.

MR: (laughs) That’s beautiful. What do you foresee, as far as the future, for Massive Attack?

RDN: I think it’s interesting. What I’m trying to do next year is deconstruct the whole band, deconstruct the live show, and send it back into almost an experimental sound system, playing everything live, and building the next record from the point of view of playing it live and then, taking it back to the studio and finish building it as an album.

MR: That’s an agenda.

RDN: Well, I don’t know how many more Mondays I can turn up at the studio and go, “Alright, sit down. I’m going to try this.” I’m still in the same room, and it’s still raining outside. Do you know what I mean?

MR: Yeah, it seems like the challenge for artists these days is not only to come up with something fresh, but now you’ve got to do it from a new perspective.

RDN: Yeah, I think so. I think the responsibility you have, being privileged to play music, record, and have people listen to you for a long time, is to repay that attention by doing your utmost to make yourself interested in music, so you can share that with other people.