Massive Attack made not one but three of the defining albums of the '90s, and are nearly single-handedly responsible for founding trip-hop, which, depending on who you ask, is either the most prevalent or worst genre of the decade's latter half. They were probably guaranteed to weather some tough times after the turn of the millennium, and they did. Their once-genre became a punchline, and band members splintered off one by one, leaving only Robert "3D" Del Naja, his increasingly claustrophobic production style, and a cloud of drama.
Times are friendlier to Massive Attack now, though. Half a decade on, 2010's Heligoland holds up surprisingly well, and "trip-hop" isn't quite the epithet it used to be. This year, one of the biggest new crossover pop stars cross-audience is a guy who used to be produced by Doc McKinney of—of all people!—Esthero. As such, Massive Attack have spent much of the decade in a long, protracted process of getting the gang back together. The group's been occupied with soundtrack work for documentaries on tax evasion and global warming, and a live show that skewers, in Del Naja's words, "utopian tech companies"; that live show featured both longterm vocalist Horace Andy and former Tricky collaborator Martina Topley-Bird. And Tricky himself appears on Ritual Spirit, an EP produced entirely by 3D from material on remix-your-own app Fantom. (A second EP, with songs by Daddy G, is due later this year.)
It's instructive to think of just how many ways this EP could be awful, how many gimmicky collaborators or landfill house vocalists could be on the album. But Massive Attack play it mostly conservative. Aside from Young Fathers—whom Del Naja called "currently the best fucking band in the world"—and newcomer Azekel, the personnel on Ritual Spirit have been around: British rapper Roots Manuva and Tricky himself, whose single "Take It There" is such a return to form it almost works best as speculative history: What if Tricky had stuck around for Mezzanine? It's also the most diehards-only track of the four—suffice it to say, if you always found Massive Attack's post-'97 schtick contrived and 3D's lyrics ridiculous, you probably won't get through this one without some eye-rolling.
"Dead Editors," with its EKG opening, begins like a 100th Window cut, but reveals itself as something with more interesting things to say: In 2010, Marshall rejoined the group with a vow that he would "bring the black back to Massive Attack," and the line that appears near-verbatim on "Dead Editors"; it's also noteworthy that Ritual Spirit features entirely black collaborators and engages significantly more with rap than Heligoland. Feverish "Ritual Spirit" hangs somewhere between meditative and heatsick, Azekel's vocal like a smoke curl; meanwhile, "Voodoo in My Blood" captures its collaborators' best impulses: a more driven version of Young Fathers' polyglot rock, a more dynamic version of Del Naja's often-of-late meandering work. Massive Attack were always equally as good producers as they were curators; it's promising that, as much of their old sound as they've retained, they've kept this as well.
