Heligoland (album)-The Daily Ledger

Heligoland is the fifth studio album by English electronic music duo Massive Attack, released on 8 February 2010 by Virgin Records. Named after a German archipelago, it was their first studio album in seven years, following 100th Window (2003). It has been certified Gold by the British Phonographic Industry (BPI).

Personnel

The record primarily features vocals from Horace Andy, as well as a number of guest vocalists: Tunde Adebimpe of TV on the Radio, Damon Albarn of Blur and Gorillaz, Hope Sandoval of Hope Sandoval and the Warm Inventions and Mazzy Star, Guy Garvey of Elbow and Martina Topley-Bird. Further contributions include guitar by Adrian Utley of Portishead (on "Saturday Come Slow"), keys from Portishead collaborator John Baggott (most notably on "Atlas Air"), keys and synth bass from Damon Albarn ("Splitting the Atom" and "Flat of the Blade" respectively), guitar (various tracks) and bass ("Girl I Love You") by Neil Davidge, bass by Billy Fuller of Beak (various tracks) and drumming from both the late Jerry Fuchs and regular Massive Attack session and touring drummer Damon Reece.

Heligoland (album)

Dan Brown and Stew Jackson (Robot Club) co-wrote "Paradise Circus", played guitar on and co-wrote "Saturday Come Slow", and part-programmed and engineered those tracks. Tim Goldsworthy contributed additional production (specific tracks unstated). Most tracks were mixed by Mark "Spike" Stent and mastered by Tim Young at Metropolis Studios, as with previous records. Unlike previous records, there are no personal acknowledgements on the inlay. Most tracks were co-produced by Neil Davidge and Robert Del Naja; Grant Marshall only contributed production to "Splitting The Atom", "Paradise Circus" and "Saturday Come Slow", but co-wrote every track. The album is dedicated to the memory of Blue Lines co-producer, Jonny Dollar.

Heligoland (album)

Background

The album's release was preceded by the release of the Splitting the Atom EP on 4 October 2009. During its development, the album was often referred to in the media as "LP5" (a reference to this being their fifth studio album) or "Weather Underground" (Robert Del Naja's early working title).

Heligoland (album)

The artwork, as with every Massive Attack album since Protection, is a collaboration between Tom Hingston and Del Naja, this time based on Del Naja's paintings. For an advertisement campaign on the London Underground, local traffic authority Transport for London insisted the cover image featured on advertising posters be altered so as not to resemble "street art", obliging the artists to remove drips and fuzz from the original image; this was intended to conform with their policy to not encourage graffiti.

Many other guest vocalists recorded sessions in the time after 100th Window but did not end up being featured on the album. These include: Stephanie Dosen, Yolanda Quartey of Phantom Limb – effectively Robot Club's band) and Jhelisa (Anderson, who had previously recorded in 2002 in the studio for material that was not included on 100th Window); and, mostly before the release of CollectedMike Patton, Aku and Akwetey Orraca-Tetteh and Devang Shah of Dragons of Zynth, Elizabeth Fraser, Terry Callier, Fredo Viola, Debbie Clare, Beth Orton and Dot Allison. Mos Def and Leslie Feist were named as artists scheduled for recording sessions back in 2004. Backing tracks from Grant Marshall's side of Massive Attack's writing (mainly facilitated by and done with Robot Club) are known to have been sent to Alice Russell, and prepared for Sharon Jones, Patti Smith and David Bowie during the era but collaboration did not come to fruition, nor did talks with Tom Waits or Tricky, in terms of featuring as guest vocalists on the record. Post-punks Mark Stewart and Keith Levene were pictured inside Del Naja's 100 Suns studio in 2009, but played no part on the album.

Del Naja said of the musical style of Heligoland, "I think it's got definitely a more organic feel. [...] 100th Window was very much about this amalgamation of everything joining, and eventually the process was so extreme that you couldn't tell if there was a string part if it was electronic or natural. [There were] lots of organic parts that ended up sounding very electronic. It became a whole world of different processes, and we wanted to do something a bit different because we've had that experience so we wanted to do something else."The track "Girl I Love You", one of multiple tracks featuring Horace Andy, is a drastically reworked version of a song originally written by Andy during his solo career.