The trek features a number of two-night stands and kicks off with a pair May 7 and 9 at Toronto’s Sound Academy. Other stops include New York City’s Terminal 5 (May 11-12), L.A.’s Wiltern (May 18-19), San Francisco’s Warfield Theatre (May 25-27) and Sasquatch! Festival at The Gorge Amphitheatre in George, Wash. (May 30).
Tickets for Massive Attack’s appearance at Sasquatch! are available now, with other shows going on sale beginning March 5.
Heligoland is the long-awaited follow up to 2003’s 100th Window, which was essentially a solo album, as it featured only one member of the band’s original core trio, Robert Del Naja.
Over the past three years Del Naja, or 3D as fans know him, has been in demand as a composer of film and documentary soundtracks, with his work finding its way into “Trouble in the Water,” “44 Inch Chest,” “In Prison My Whole Life” and “Gomorrah,” which earned him a David Di Donatello Award for best song.
Besides TV on the Radio’s Adebimpe, and Albarn – who also plays bass on the track “Flat of the Blade” and keyboards on “Splitting the Atom” – Heligoland features guest work by Mazzy Star’s Hope Sandoval, Martina Topley-Bird, Elbow’s Guy Garvey and Portishead’s Adrian Utley, who steps in to play guitar on “Saturday Come Slow.”
Here’s the gritty and noirish clip for “Flat of the Blade,” which features vocals by Garvey and was directed by vérité photographer Ewan Spencer, who’s spent the past several years documenting various sub-cultures of British youth.