A huge thanks to the British Library for having us on Thursday:
Our fantastic host Miranda Sawyer was with Mark Stewart, Mad Professor and Inkie, and myself, for a 90 minute discussion, facing a passionate audience!
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Massive Attack: Out of the Comfort Zone
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The story of a sound, a city and a group of revolutionary artists
Bristol was part-built on the wealth generated by the slave trade, an arrival point for Caribbean immigrants, and a melting pot that shaped one of the most successful and innovative bands of the last thirty years, Massive Attack. Journalist and broadcaster Miranda Sawyer talks to the author of a new book on their story, Melissa Chemam, and special guests, artist Inkie, producer Mad Professor and musician Mark Stewart.
Massive Attack: Out Of The Comfort Zone (Tangent Books, Bristol, 2019) is based on a long series of interviews with Robert Del Naja (known as 3D), other Massive Attack members as well as many other musicians and artists who worked with Massive Attack or saw them arise. It explores the often non-conformist history of Bristol and how it shaped the formation of the Wild Bunch and then Massive Attack, and how band members 3D, Daddy G and Mushroom shared this space with musicians and artists including Banksy, Tricky, Portishead and so many more. Chemam follows the making of their groundbreaking album Blue Lines; their astounding successors including Mezzanine, and their unique collaborations with Horace Andy, Shara Nelson, Tracey Thorn, Madonna, Elizabeth Fraser, Sinéad O’Connor, Mos Def, Damon Albarn, Young Fathers, Adam Curtis, Banksy and others.
This event will have speech to text interpretation.
Melissa Chemam is a French journalist and author who has worked for France 24, the BBC World Service and Radio France International, as well as many magazines, and for the filmmaker Raoul Peck. Massive Attack: Out Of The Comfort Zone is her first book
Inkie emerged as a graffiti writer from the notorious 80s Bristol scene where he painted alongside 3D and Banksy. In 1989 he came 2nd in the 1989 World Street Art Championships, but was also arrested at the head of 72 other writers in the UK's largest ever Graffiti bust, Operation Anderson. Inkie has since worked as head of design for SEGA, Xbox, and creates prints, illustrations and clothing; his beautiful trademark style takes inspiration from everything from Mayan architecture, William Morris, Alfons Mucha and Islamic geometry, and has appeared in the books Bankys Bristol, Children of the Can, Graffiti World and magazines Graphotism and Dazed & Confused
Mad Professor is one of the leading producers of dub Reggae music's second generation and was instrumental in transitioning dub into the digital age through releases on his own Ariwa Sound label and collaborations with the likes of Lee “Scratch” Perry, Sly and Robbie, Pato Banton, Jah Shaka and Horace Andy, as well as artists outside the realm of traditional reggae and dub, such as Sade, The Orb, and Grace Jones. In 19915 he created an entire dub rework of Massive Attack’s Protection album, and went on to repeat this for Mezzanine – with those versions only now appearing, 20 years after being recorded.
Miranda Sawyer is journalist and broadcaster. Her career began in 1988 with Smash Hits and through the 1990s she wrote for Select, Time Out The Mirror Mixmag andThe Face. She is now a feature writer for The Observer and its radio critic and her writing also appears in The Mirror, GQ, Vogue and The Guardian. She makes radio documentaries for Radio 4 and BBC 6Music and interviews musicians and artists for The Culture Show. Her latest season is Sound and Vision for 6 Music, which invites actors and directors to discuss key musical moments from their films
Mark Stewart and his first band The Pop Group blasted out of Bristol in 1979 with the wired, avant future-funk manifesto of their ’We Are All Prostitutes’ single and the vibrant, cyber-punk energy of his music productions has been undiminished ever since - across anarchic dub reggae inspired collaborations with Adrian Sherwood’s On-U Sound; his early hiphop-influenced oufits Maffia and Tackhead, ‘industrial’ albums of the mid 1980s cited as seminal by Ministry’s Al Jorgensen and NIN’s Trent Reznor through to techno and proto dubstep.
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Book Cover art from Massive Attack: Out of the Comfort Zone by Melissa Chemam.
Image by Robert Del Naja.
https://www.bl.uk/events/massive-attack-out-of-the-comfort-zone
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