Product Description

Although variously labeled as hip-hop, trip-hop and soul, the distinctive sound forged by Massive Attack often resembles a more innovative take on the lover's rock style of reggaethat launched the careers of Caron Wheeler and Maxi Priest.(Massive Attack in turn put themselves on the map as a group with tunes voiced by old-time reggae crooner Horace Andy).Viewed in that light, it seems a natural decision for the group to invoke the time-honoured Jamaican tradition of the dub album, a group of tracks (taken in this case from their critically acclaimed PROTECTION) reworked by a mixing board auteur like Mad Professor.
A second generation digital offspring of original dub pioneers like King Tubby and Lee "Scratch" Perry, the professor's concoctions bear only a distantrelationship to the analogue dub which emanated from Tubby's reel-to-reel and echo-chamber set-up. While spiritually akin to '70s dub, the sound here is transformed by Mad Prof's digital production values, the acid house aesthetics of 1990s London, and of course unmistakable Massive Attack elements--like the fragments of Tracey Thorn's torch song vocal thatreverberate throughout.

Track Listing

1. Radiation ruling the nation - Protection
2. Bumper ball dub - Karmacoma
3. Trinity dub - Three
4. Cool Monsoon - Weather Storm
5. Eternal feedback - Sly
6. Moving Dub - Better Things
7. I Spy - Spying Glass
8. Backward suckling - Heat Miser

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #7634 in Music
• Released on: 1995-02-20
• Number of discs: 1

Amazon.co.uk Review
This is the studio work of London's prodigious dub godfather, Mad Professor, who takes Massive Attack's Protection album as raw material to create a completely new experience. Bits are added, dropped out, accentuated, run through sonic effects, drenched in reverb, turned inside out until the songs disappear and in their place emerge reborn textural soundscapes. No Protection gives a sort of discursive aural commentary on Protection's original songs, pointing out all the obscured details--the most minute percussive rings and beeps, the most mesmerising bass loops. --Roni Sarig

Customer Reviews

Needs time.
As with all music its a very strong matter of personal taste, if you like massive attack you won't neccesarily enjoy this. I love it, but it took me a year before I actually enjoyed it and now is one of my most played album. Great for zoning out and getting lost...

This is a journey into sound......
Fantastic, forget Protection, I think many people who buy this are expecting a remix of Unfinished Sympathy. It's not, it's dub, that's what it was meant to be and that's what it is. It does exactly what it says on the tin.

Dub originates from Jamaican producers in the 60s messing around with the instrumental track of popular reggae hits, often as B sides. The echo chamber often being the weapon of choice, this is what the Professor triumphs at and what he is best remembered for.

It drags you in and spits you out, enveloped in a gluey, sticky bass bubble, adhering you helpless to the sofa and unable to reach for the controls. What a way to go......

Quite quite mad, but endearingly so
This is less a remix album than a collection of new tracks loosely based around the original recordings which comprised the still-excellent Protection album. What Mad Professor does here is turn up the bass until your ribcage shakes, strips away some of the layers and concentrates on the hypnotic cycles of bass and drums and bass and drums and... it's unsettling, dark and at times dense, but rewarding. I don't know about the first cut being the deepest, but the first track here is the weakest. From thereon in, and just when you may start thinking "I've bought a lemon," the bass rumbles away and sweeps you off with it, and by the time you hit Cool Monsoon, you're away in another dimension. Don't buy this if you want to hear "Protection" with a different drum pattern or arrangement. Buy it if you want to hear a totally different dub-heavy take on a classic album. It's a potent brew.