Massive Attack have debuted an atmospheric unreleased song as part of the brand new immersive ‘Piccadilly Un:Plugged’ installation in London.
- READ MORE: Act 1.5: Inside Massive Attack’s Bristol blueprint for the future of sustainable live music
The Bristol trip-hop duo – comprising of Robert ‘3D’ Del Naja and Grant ‘Daddy G’ Marshall – have teamed up with artist and designer Dr. Nelly Ben Hayoun-Stépanian as part of her new immersive art installation which is located in London’s West End, Piccadilly. The installation is free to the public and will be on display from March 6 to 8 as a part of Art of London’s Art After Dark initiative.
Massive Attack have shared their unreleased cover of ‘Everything is going according to plan’ by the Russian punk band GrOb, which served as their contribution to the exhibit.
“‘Everything is going according to plan’ was written by Yegor Letov in the 1980s and was a withering critique of the Russian state,” Massive Attack shared in a statement. “It was performed live in Russian language by Massive Attack in 2013 as part of a collaborative show with filmmaker Adam Curtis.” You can listen to the track in the Instagram post below.
‘Piccadilly Un:Plugged’ was inspired by the vibrant culture of the London district while also reflecting on astronomy, space environmentalism and our connection with outer space.
The installation features giant neon cats inspired by physics experiments as well as extraterrestrial rocks and high-quality telescopes. It also includes “a lunar-bounced soundscape” which sends tracks used for the exhibit such as Massive Attack’s cover – as well as songs provided by Pussy Riot, The Avalanches, Moses Boyd, Ayse Hassan (Savages), Mirrored Fatality, and EOBIONT (Láwû Makuriye’nt) – directly to the moon via “EME (Earth to Moon to Earth)” technology.
Speaking about the EME technology in a statement, Professor Simon Garrington of the University of Manchester explained: “Using the Earth-Moon-Earth technology to transmit sounds to the moon and back is a fascinating fusion of science and art. To receive speech and music this way is a technical challenge and requires powerful radio telescopes, such as The University of Manchester’s giant Lovell Telescope.
“What we hear combines our human creativity with signals from the moon and the cosmos beyond in a truly unique way. The lunar landscape actually imprints itself in the sounds and signals we receive. Astronomers can exploit this to image the surface of planets and asteroids in a similar way to how bats perceive their environment.”
Elsewhere, Massive Attack previously spoke to NME and opened up about the prospect of new music with Del Naja sharing: “We do have some new music which we’ve been sitting on for four years… dispute at the label – that’s a different article altogether. Hopefully we’re going to be able to release it next year and do some gigs. Obviously we’ve set a standard for ourselves now [with Act 1.5], and we’re going to stick with it. To get given that Race to Zero artist recognition. We’ll stick with it.
“I hate sitting on stuff for too long because I’m the first person to get bored of it. I deliberately don’t play it for months so that I can maintain some enthusiasm for it. It’s good – I’m looking forward to it!”
In other news, the trip-hop duo have recently announced the addition of a huge Manchester show to their 2025 tour plans.