Massive Attack frontman Robert Del Naja has spoken to NME about how live music can tackle the climate crisis, and the band’s plans to release new music next year.
The release of fresh material from the Bristol pioneers has been sporadic – their most offering was 2020 EP ‘Eutopia’.
“We do have some new music which we’ve been sitting on for four years,” Del Naja confirmed to NME. “Hopefully we’re going to be able to release it next year and do some gigs.”
The frontman, speaking to NME alongside long-term collaborator Mark Donne, also said the band turned down the opportunity to play Coachella 2025 and are making plans to collaborate on Billie Eilish’s 2025 European tour.
After a period of upheaval for the group – including the death of guitarist Angelo Bruschini in 2023 – this year marked a return to major activity for Massive Attack, hitting the stage for the first time five years back in June.
Del Naja sat down with NME before Massive Attack headlined the recent Act 1.5 “climate action accelerator” event in in Liverpool, after it was anointed by the UN as the world’s first ‘Accelerator City for Climate Action’. The gathering marked the launch of eight year-long experiments focussed on “rapid decarbonisation across live music, film and TV production in the city”.
They were joined by IDLES and Nile Rodgers, who also played shows that utilised groundbreaking approaches, such as using clean renewable energy to power gigs and offering free public transport to many fans as part of the cost of their ticket.
This is a continuation to Massive Attack’s commitment action on climate. In August, they headlined a trailblazing hometown show for 30,000 fans at Clifton Downs, Bristol, which was also notable for its pioneering approach.
NME sat down with Robert Del Naja and collaborator Mark Donne – Lead Producer on the Act 1.5 initiative – to hear about the project, how Billie Eilish’s team got in touch after their Bristol festival, why they turned down Coachella 2025 and Massive Attack’s intentions for the year ahead.
NME: Hello guys. You’ve gathered influential people and organisations from across culture to accelerate their action on climate change, with IDLES and Nile Rodgers joining you to headline shows. How did those acts get involved?
Robert Del Naja: “To be honest, this Act 1.5 project is open to everybody. We’ve made it clear from the very beginning – with the commissioning of the report [2021’s Roadmap to Super-Low Carbon Live Music] and the recommendations from that – it’s open source and available to everyone in the sector. Every band, agent, promoter, artist, label, platform. We don’t want to pick the identities that work with it. We want the identities to pick the project up. We want it to become mainstream.”
Mark Donne: “What’s exciting about what’s happening here in Liverpool with Act 1.5, is that any city can come to us now and say, ‘What are you doing? And how are you doing it?’ We want to pluralise that information and share it. In terms of the other artists – apart from the fact they’re great – we wanted to make sure we had a demographic spread. I wouldn’t have presented them as a three night festival or anything like that. In fact, if we’re doing what we’re doing correctly, you shouldn’t know these shows are any different from normal. One example, 71 per cent of people watching IDLES last night [November 28] had for the first time ever in the world had free public transport as part of their gig ticket.
“The wider point is, we’re getting on with this [action on climate change]. When I look at modern history, most of the solutions I love the most that’ve created social change come from science and the arts – seldom have come from centres of political power or civic bodies. It comes from people who slice things in a different way.”
We all care about climate change and how it’s affecting us, but can you explain how and why music, TV and film are a way of accelerating the changes that will benefit all of us?
Del Naja: “For me it’s less of the distinction between music, film and TV. It’s more of the adventure of the imagination. As Mark says, an industrial solution to a civic problem isn’t going to be found within the sectors themselves because they’re all completely locked into their own relationships and supply chains which can’t be broken open. That’s why policy takes so long to implement from government to government.
“Sometimes you need something like this that comes from the outside and says, ‘Fuck it, hold up, why can’t you guys work with you guys?’ There’s a scientist there, an energy industrialist there – why don’t you get together and go to the city and ask ‘why can’t we do it this way’? That’s what this [Act 1.5] is. It’s about breaking free from the mindset, and being able to express imagination. We need to turn the imagination of this sector into action.”
Donne: “Nothing is happening [action on climate change] at the rate it should be happening. We’re in a post-awareness moment. Everyone knows about this.”
Del Naja: “It’s a battle for storytelling isn’t it? We all know what’s going on. It’s about who’s telling the best story. At the moment there’s so much disinformation about climate out there – it’s almost like the occupation of the mind. Who is able to colonise our brains? There’s an installation here at Act 1.5 today that represents the noise that we’re all having to fight through to get to the science.”
Speaking of climate disinformation, Donald Trump is shortly to return to the White House as president. How does that make you feel? Does it embolden or discourage you?
Del Naja: “No, let’s bring the United Nations into the conversation. The UNFCCC, the IPCC reports, and the Paris 1.5 agreement fundamentally changed the way all of us think about climate change. It’s changed the way we think about all the parts of this: climate breakdown, biodiversity, everything, crop failure, famine, starvation, wildfires, sea level rises. You can see clearly the peril now. We’re watching it happen in real-time, and it’s ridiculous. The UN is such an important part of this. In the same way the International Criminal Court is so important to keep international law upheld, and anyone in violation of that law brought to account.
“You can see the national identities that are happy to discredit the UN continually which are putting us in the greatest peril. Whether it’s over political reasons, genocide or over climate change it gets boxed up as ‘this is all about the left wing and wokeness’. It’s like, ‘What are you talking about?’ This is the battle for existence. Even though that sounds a little bit wide-eyed and fantastical – it’s actually not.”
Donne: “I was having a row with a good friend of mine the other day about the protection of the Paris 1.5 agreement with Trump coming in, and he said, ‘Yeah, but Joe Biden drilled more oil than any president ever in history and it looks like it will be technically impossible for Trump to equal’ – for logistical or whatever reasons. My own view is, I’m worried about the situation in Europe. Mercifully the UK isn’t behind on this issue – for the moment. That risk is always there. Which brings us sort of full circle back to unifying mediums like music or film and TV.”
Del Naja: “We’ve got to find ways of unification through storytelling – leading by example and bringing that together through the creative industries. You’re looking at trying to find a standardisation within our own behaviour that we voluntarily accept. Otherwise, you’re looking at it all having to be regulated. Then it’s about control of power and sovereignty of the self. And then you’re dealing straight into the middle of the cultural battle about self-sovereignty and the role of The State and taxation – the whole fucking Elon Musk gig.
“I mean, it’s all a big joke for those guys. Fiscal anarchy is great for them because they’ve got so much money to move around the world, but the rest of us are fucked. That sovereign self bullshit is the thing I hate the most. Because really we have to work together. The human race doesn’t work as a species of individuals. Not many species on the planet do. Maybe a snow leopard does? Fucking great. But how many of those are out there?”
In the run-up to your Act 1.5 festival in Bristol in August you both expressed frustration that you’d made resources publicly available around live music taking action on climate but there had been little engagement. Did that change after that demonstration of how it works?
Del Naja: “Yeah, well, today’s conversation with the live music promoters – that was amazing. We can’t give you details but we’re now talking to promoters about taking everything that made Bristol work and moving it into other cities. Potentially a promoter using exactly the same formula for all the series of shows across open spaces in the city for the whole year. That’s what we want to happen. There’s no point in doing one-off exemplars, we want it to move into these practical areas.”
Donne: “Jim King [Ed – CEO, festival division of AEG Europe – one of the world’s largest concert promoters] is here. AEG has sent a team of people here. There’s three of them all together, I’m really pleased.”
Del Naja: “To me, anything we wanted to achieve from that Bristol show was that. It’s great having a load of press of the project – no disrespect to journalism at all – the objective was what we’re doing with the promoters next.
“We know that as an artist, as much as we can critique a promoter [we want to work with them]. In the same way, I never get drawn on criticising other artists about private jet use or anything. One artist digging out another artist is the worst thing that can happen. No matter what I agree with or disagree with. The one thing we do want is for artists and promoters to have these proper positive scraps about getting stuff done, because that’s the way it’s going to work.”
Donne: “The biggest promoter there is here. We’re bringing a major international music festival here next year under Act 1.5 conditions, too. A third festival, Bluedot, which has been on hiatus. They’ve been in touch saying, ‘We are going to relaunch and we were looking at sustainability and how we bolt that on, and because we have half an academic backing we don’t want to do that, we need to completely redesign. Can you help us completely redesign the festival?’ Well, what do you mean? Like, what’s the point in us bringing in some batteries? Let’s make it sustainable for the next 40–50 years. So, that’s interesting.”
That Bristol gig, to summarise, has done a lot… you’ve received a lot of attention?
Donne: “This was an artist [Massive Attack] and an industrialist [Dale Vince – founder of Ecotricity] sticking their neck out and saying, ‘We’ll take it’. The proof of concept is done. Like it or dislike it. You can’t say it doesn’t work. Or you can talk about numbers, that’s all right. You can talk about trying to do this stuff on dumb legislation and dumb regulation – which we’re talking to the government about right now.
“The UN announced this at New York Climate Week, we weren’t there. Maggie [Baird, Billie Eilish’s mother] got hold of Mark Watts at C40 Cities and said ‘How do I Act 1.5 Billie’s European dates?’
“I think where we’re going to get the breakthrough with Billie’s European tour [July 2025] is on rail – we’re working out a deal at the moment with Trainline. Where all across Europe we say, ‘How about a nice hum-dinging discount?’. Billie can say, if you’ve got a ticket to my gig you get this discount code and you travel by rail.”
Es Devlin spoke at today’s event. She was pressed by interviewer Chris Packham about working on U2’s show at The Sphere in Las Vegas. She also spoke about how she thinks there’s a social tipping point coming where artists want to be on-side with climate action because it’s felt unacceptable not to be?
Del Naja: “I’ve worked with Es, and I greatly respect her work. At the same time it’s a head-scratcher, the artists in Vegas residency thing, because that’s an aviation destination. You can’t get to Vegas [without flying]. So if you’re doing a couple years in Vegas, you are the catalyst for all those scope 3 emissions [indirect emissions created by a company or activity] by playing. You can’t say it’s nothing to do with me, you’re in fucking Vegas, right? I scratch my head with that stuff.
You don’t want to be drawn on specific artists doing Vegas residencies, but what about Las Vegas in general. This is a place in a desert location that isn’t served by public transport…
Del Naja: “…run on sprinklers. We said no to Coachella for next year because again, we’ve been there once, and once was enough. It’s in Palm Springs. It’s a golf resort built on a desert, run on a sprinkler system, using public water supplies. Mental. If you want to see something that’s the most ludicrous bit of human behaviour – it’s right there.
If you could send a message to any artist thinking of doing a Las Vegas residency, what would it be?
Del Naja: “It’s like the Sphere. Of course I’d love to get my hands on that much LED! Acres of spherical LED to play with. You’re not going to go to Vegas to do that are you? What a brilliant bit of infrastructure in the worst possible place it could be – in the worst setting in the world.
Before we wrap up, what would you like people to know about Massive Attack’s forthcoming activity? Touring? New music?
Del Naja: “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.”
It’s been a while. Fans will be excited to hear there’s new music. How do you feel about sharing it?
Del Naja: “Yeah, 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!”
Announcing the latest Act 1.5 activity earlier this year, Massive Attack said: “This summer – the Earth’s warmest on record – UN General Secretary Antonio Guterres reminded the world that Paris 1.5 ‘is not a target, it is a physical limit’. Live music events and their touring cycles are carbon intensive & high polluting activities, and their incredible popularity cannot justify any denial of that limit.”