Massive Attack, and massively important

Those of a certain vintage may well argue that the music scene in Bristol in the late 1980s and early 1990s was every bit as vibrant and progressive, if not more so, than Manchester’s.

Massive Attack, Tricky, Portishead; there was a sense in which they were all from some indefinable collective that acquired the term trip-hop but which defied specific categorisaton. In the case of Massive Attack, they were and remain a collective, one of the UK’s most important acts of the past 30 years-plus, whose hits have included the haunting but gorgeous ‘Protection’ that featured Everything But The Girl’s Tracey Thorn on lead vocals. They headline the Friday at this year’s Mallorca Live Festival.