Massive Attack to tour Australia for first time in 16 years

Massive Attack are set to tour Australia for the first time in 16 years. The influential British trip-hop group, made up of Robert “3D” Del Naja and Grant “Daddy G” Marshall, will play Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney in August. The upcoming tour will be the band’s fourth appearance in Australia and their first Australian shows since 2010. Massive Attack recently released their first new music in six years, a collaboration with Tom Waits titled Boots on the Ground. Awarding it four stars, the Guardian’s music critic Alexis Petridis described the track as “dark, disturbing, ominous, with a distinct streak of WTF? running through it … music perfectly fitting for the times”. Formed in Bristol in 1988, Massive Attack are pioneers of the trip-hop genre – a dark sound of hip-hop rhythms, soul samples, dub bass and atmospheric electronics. Their 1991 debut Blue Lines was a touchstone, among the most influential albums of its era. Their biggest hits include Unfinished Sympathy and Teardrop. They have sold more than 13m copies of their five albums: Blue Lines, Protection (1994), Mezzanine (1998), 100th Window (2003) and Heligoland (2010). The band were briefly prevented from entering Australia in 2003 when their visas were cancelled after Del Naja was arrested as part of a UK police crackdown on child sexual abuse images. …