There are three different characters behind Britain's coolest, most influential dance act. One hip hop obsessed b-boy. One DJ who admits they used to judge each others' trainers as harshly as their music. And the third? He's been up all night again, which is why their new album 'Mezzanine' is set in the paranoid hours between night and morning. Is this Massive Attack's most revealing interview ever?

Massive’s 3D takes an exploratory sip from his glass of Martini and crushed strawberries – “Oh man, that’s just ridiculous,” he enthuses-and begins to explain the Mezzanine, the title. “It’s that particular point of the day when the night-before feeling turns into the morning-after feeling,” he says, “and you’re up and you’re with someone and it’s just you two against the World. That idea reflects me, my kind of lifestyle.”



Bearing in mind you’re a Mixmag reader, you might just have been there. Back home from a club in the grey light of dawn. Too much of everything, so you’re never goingto sleep. And there’s nothing to do but sit around, staring at nothing. Watch the air move. Try to ignore that slow, creeping, nameless fear.

In a London hotel room, Grant Marshall, Massive’s Daddy G, laughs. “The mezzanine? I think D spends half his life there. I don’t think he knows whether he’s coming or going. ”

On the Mezzanine, when you’re too fucked to talk and too wired to make any sense, the only thing to do is to step to tunes, and wait for the World to slip away.

Massive Attack have made an album just for you.