On a warm July evening in 2013, an
excited crowd gathered in the derelict
Mayfield train depot in Manchester,
surrounded on three sides of the vast
Edwardian station by translucent
screens flickering with images of
Helmand, teenage Siberian gangs,
bleak 70s New York, Vladimir Putin,
Bambi and Jane Fonda. As the images
strobed then slowed, bass-shaking
cover versions of Barbra Streisand
songs, bubblegum pop, Nirvana and
Russian punk classics rumbled
through the speakers.
The show – a chopped-up riff on a
post-9/11 world – was a joint venture
between Bristol-based Massive Attack
and Adam Curtis, the film-maker behind
provocative documentary series like The
Power of Nightmares and All Watched
Over by Machines of Loving Grace.
“It was a strange gig to play live – we
were working to a timecode set by the
video, and because the audience were
surrounded by screens they often had
their backs to us,” Massive Attack’s
co-founder Robert Del Naja – otherwise
known as 3D – recalls. “I’m not sure we
got it right until the end.”
When the gig finished, Del Naja
headed for his dressing room, where
he bumped into an old friend who was
waiting backstage – Ray Cooper, who
had originally signed Massive Attack to
their first label in 1988.
Cooper had brought along a colleague,
Andrew Melchior. Melchior had been
one of the first in the music industry to
recognise how technology could help
artists. Working at EMI and Virgin in thelate 90s, he set up the equivalent of an
in-house startup that developed artists’
digital streaming, blogging, ringtones
and artwork. In 1998 he helped David
Bowie create a fully-fledged e-com-
merce-driven ISP – David.com – a
precursor to massive virtual worlds
such as Second Life. Users would sign
in, choose from a range of avatars,
and join text-based chatrooms. Bowie
himself often assumed a rabbit avatar
and joined in the conversations.
“He understood how music was
going to become like water – available
everywhere for free,” Melchior explains.
“He created and sold Bowie bonds –
securitised rights to future royalties
based on past sales. He was cashing
out for tens of millions before everyone
caught on – he knew the music would be
worth less over time. David.com became
Ultrastar – the first artist-owned online
merchandising company, creating
T-shirts and posters for acts such as
U2, the Rolling Stones and Sting. It was
like an Amazon for artists well before
Radiohead, and it meant when people
bought Rolling Stones merchandise,
Bowie also got a royalty.”
Melchior and Cooper were advising
US-based augmented reality startup
Magic Leap. Watching Massive Attack’s
show, Melchior sensed an opportunity.
“The creative energy and innovation
of that show was perfectly suited to
the brave new world of mixed reality
spectacle,” Melchior explains.
The three men chatted for hours.
On Massive Attack’s recent tours, Del
Naja had been trying to include locally
sampled headlines, images and stories
in the band’s newsfeed-style light show,
flashing text across screens dotted
around the stage. He wondered how
he could adapt the onscreen narrative
each night based on audience reaction.
Melchior and Del Naja also shared
an obsession with The Sims computer
game. Melchior knew its creator, the
legendary Will Wright. He suggested Del
Naja take a trip to California, first to see
how Magic Leap was using music in its
AR headset, and then to talk to Wright.
In September 2013, they met him at
the HQ of his startup, Stupid Fun Club.
For the past few years Wright had been
working on Thread, a social media app
that combined Instagram, Spotify andDraw Something – allowing users to
blend sound, music, images and text
in their posts – and on ways to tag and
share music to generate the audio in
games, creating musical mind maps
for computers to compose on the fly.
“They were taking the AI tools of the
utopian tech companies and using
them to make art,” Del Naja explains.
“He had these mind maps on the wall –
some were diagrams of the human brain
labelled with the brain parts we use to
tag smells or process emotion and
retrieve things. Some were metabrains- maps of the way people connected.
He was using them to see how content
and understanding worked in the
human brain – we access data, click
on anything we have, then rearrange it
and change it into another idea.
“For me, everything was in a box
before that – your phone and your
internet had their limits set. I could see
everything spread out in front of me and
saw there wasn’t anything we couldn’t
organise then reorganise, then redis-
cover and redistribute.
“Anyone in the creative industry
who didn’t do that would lose control
to the labels and tech giants who were
stitching things up.”
Massive Attack’s music has always
relied on collaborators – while tracks
were built entirely from samples, other
musicians always inspired different
things for the band. Tracey Thorn’s
haunting vocals added a mournful
longing to “Protection”; Shara Nelson’s
deep, warm range made “Unfinished
Sympathy” feel like an old soul tune over
the top of grinding samples.
“Each time you find the muse you see
things in a new way,” Del Naja explains.
“If you don’t keep changing that muse
you end up building comfortable
routines where there’s no tension and
everyone knows how to behave. When
you get to that point of comfort, there’s
not a lot more to explore.”
Now, as Wright demoed his software,
Del Naja found himself becoming fasci-
‘ THEY WERE TAKING
THE AI TOOLS OF
THE UTOPIAN
TECH COMPANIES
AND USING
THEM TO MAKE ART’
Right: Robert Del Naja in his studio, wearing his paint-spray respirator