Before their headlining appearance at Glastonbury, Massive Attack sat down with Gigwise to discuss what’s in the works for their next album. One half of the Brit duo, graffiti-artist-turned-rapper Robert Del Naja, aka 3D, discussed the long-awaited material saying, “To be honest there’s a whole album of new material sitting in a studio at the moment which isn’t finished and hasn’t been played at all yet.”

Photo by Raymond Flotat

The group’s sixth studio album, the first since 2010’s Heligoland, will be a “different approach” according to 3D who explained, “We’ve always woken under a DJ-based ideology incorporating the beats and rhythms first, so what we’ve been doing is just straight up songs and melodies.”

Taking inspiration from their work with documentary maker Adam Curtis, Del Naja went on to discuss, “At the moment I’m thinking that on this record we’ve been concentrating on songs and the inspirations for them. Working with Adam last year saw us hear a lot of old pop songs which I guess made us look at things in a different way.”

Raymond Flotat

He went on to discuss the future album’s collaborations saying, “There’s one track I’ve done with Tricky…but I’ve gotta play it live with him really, and that’s not ready for this tour yet as it would have just been a bit haphazard to throw it in there for these shows.” After Glastonbury and a number of European summer festivals like Longitude and Blackheath, Massive Attack will hop across the pond to headline Corona Capital and Treasure Island Music Festival this October.