I’ve been anticipating the release of Massive Attack’s fifth album for awhile, and it finally drops today! The sound is a bit of a departure from their past two albums and more of a return to the sound that made them so popular.
In celebration, I’m including some artwork from a couple of their previous albums, which features some of my favorite photography and design work.
I’ve always appreciated how well Massive Attack sells a feeling with their music. Each album has a great atmosphere, and I think they’ve always done a good job of pairing visuals with their sound.
The artwork for Mezzanine is one of my favorite album packages. It was photographed by Nick Knight, and features a digital composite of a beetle and some crushed metal. It’s rendered in high contrast black and white, and paired with some stylistically similar portraits of each member on the inside. The heavy sans-serif font rounds out the package nicely.
100th Window is my favorite Massive Attack album. I love the conceptual artwork of the glass sculpture being broken, frozen in complete clarity mid-shatter. There were also a couple promo videos made to go along with the album, which feature various objects being destroyed in extreme slow-motion. Included below is one of the videos. Simply stunning!
