Massive Attack are an English trip hop collective formed in 1988 in Bristol, England by Robert "3D" Del Naja, Grant "Daddy G" Marshall, Adrian "Tricky" Thaws and Andrew "Mushroom" Vowles.

[3] The single "Unfinished Sympathy" was a chart hit in Europe, including number one on the Dutch Top 40, and was later voted the 63rd-greatest song of all time in a poll by NME.

[3][6] The group have collaborated with several recurring guest vocalists, including Horace Andy, Shara Nelson, Tracey Thorn, Elizabeth Fraser, Sinéad O'Connor, Damon Albarn and Hope Sandoval.

[17] The band used guest vocalists, interspersed with their own sprechgesang stylings, on top of what became regarded as an essentially British creative sampling production; a trademark sound that fused hip hop, soul, reggae and other eclectic references, both musical and lyrical.

With McVey out of the picture,[clarification needed] Massive Attack enlisted the production talents of former Wild Bunch Nellee Hooper to co-produce some songs on it, with Mushroom.

[25][26] In 1995, Massive Attack started a label distributed by Virgin/EMI, Melankolic, and signed Craig Armstrong and a number of other artists such as Horace Andy, Lewis Parker, Alpha, Sunna, and Day One.

[27] The same year the Insects became unavailable for co-production and having parted ways with Nellee Hooper, the band were introduced to Neil Davidge,[28] a relatively unknown producer who had an association with anonymous dance-pop outfit DNA.

[31] In 1997, 3D became the band's main producer in the recording sessions that made Mezzanine, Massive Attack's most commercially successful album,[32] selling nearly four million copies.

[35] Around this time, 3D, with Davidge decamped into Ridge Farm studio with friends and band members of Lupine Howl (made up of former members of the band Spiritualized, including Damon Reece, who went on to be Massive Attack's permanent session drummer and one of two live drummers) towards a fourth Massive Attack LP, taking things even further into a rock direction.

The application was developed by a team including 3D and let users hear parts of four new songs by remixing them in real time, using the phone's location, movement, clock, heartbeat, and camera.

[56] On 13 July 2018, Massive Attack cancelled their appearance at the Mad Cool festival in Madrid because of sound bleed from Franz Ferdinand on a neighbouring stage.

[59] The three-track fusion was created across five cities during the COVID-19 global lockdown period, and was partly formed by generative algorithmic visuals from AI art pioneer Mario Klingemann and collaborations with Algiers, Young Fathers and US poet Saul Williams.

[70] In an interview in 2006, Daddy G said, "We used to hate that terminology trip-hop so bad," [laughs] "You know, as far we were concerned, Massive Attack music was unique, so to put it in a box was to pigeonhole it and to say, 'Right, we know where you guys are coming from.

[72] Del Naja conceived and designed an eight-night festival with filmmaker Adam Curtis—in collaboration with UVA (United Visual Artists)—that premiered in Manchester, UK in July 2013.

[79] The show challenged the idea of nostalgia and power, and featured machine learning GANS and deep fakes from Mario Klingemann, as well as new films from Curtis that were used to tell a narrative story.

[83] Massive Attack have worked with Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and Stop the War Coalition, while also having helped fund a legal challenge to military intervention in international courts.

[85] In 2010, the video shot by Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin for the song "Saturday Come Slow", featuring Albarn, drew attention to the use of music in torture.

[86] Massive Attack donated all proceeds from their 2010 EP Atlas Air to War Child, a charity the band previously supported when they contributed to The Help Album.

[87] In 2007, Del Naja, musicians Albarn and Brian Eno, and United Visual Artists contributed to a Greenpeace demonstration against the renewal of the Trident nuclear programme that was held on board the Arctic Sunrise on the River Thames.

[89] Previously, Del Naja had openly criticised Ferguson for being a member of the Society of Merchant Venturers,[90] an organisation dating back to the 16th century which had many connections with the Bristol slave trade.

In November 2019, along with other public figures, Massive Attack signed a letter supporting Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn describing him as "a beacon of hope in the struggle against emergent far-right nationalism, xenophobia and racism in much of the democratic world" and endorsed him in the 2019 UK general election.

[94] During a concert in Istanbul in 2014, Massive Attack named those who died in anti-government protests at Gezi Park on the outdoor screen at their back with the following sentences: "Their killers are still out there" and "We won't forget Soma".

[95][96] In June 2024, Massive Attack cancelled a concert at the Black Sea Arena in Tbilisi, originally scheduled for 28 July, in response to the Georgian government's repression of the nationwide civil protests against law proposals that could have restricted freedom of press and LGBT rights in the country; in an official statement, the band explained their decision by writing quote, "At this moment, performing at the state-owned Black Sea Arena could be seen as an endorsement of their violent crackdown against peaceful protests and civil society".

[97] In late July 2014, Del Naja and Marshall visited the Bourj el-Barajneh refugee camp in Lebanon to meet with Palestinian volunteers at an educational centre.

[101] In May 2024, the group publicly expressed their support to the music acts who had decided to boycott The Great Escape Festival in Brighton and Hove, in protest against the event's sponsor Barclays and its investments in companies supplying arms that were reportedly used by Israeli military forces in their invasion of the Gaza Strip.

[102] On 28 November 2019, Robert Del Naja announced that Massive Attack partnered with a research centre based at the University of Manchester to explore the music industry's climate impact.

He wrote in a column in The Guardian: "the commissioning of the renowned Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research to map the full carbon footprint of typical tour cycles, and to look specifically at the three key areas where CO2 emissions in our sector are generated."

[106] In July and October 2019, the group protested in 60 other cities worldwide,[107] Robert Del Naja providing a portable radio network using speakers in backpacks with receivers and transmitters for the campaigners in London.

[110] The band played a Bristol show named "Act 1.5" on 24 August 2024 with the goal of being a "large-scale climate action accelerator", blazing a "trail for new standards of decarbonisation of live music."

The awards, named after the Cardiff born entertainer Ivor Novello, are presented annually in London by the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors (BASCA).