Protection by Massive Attack

Protection, Massive Attack's second studio album, came out on 26 September 1994, three years after Blue Lines had more or less invented trip-hop, and it finds the Bristol collective sinking even deeper into the smoke. The band co-produced with Nellee Hooper, and the lineup was still the founding four: 3D, Daddy G, Mushroom and Tricky, who would leave later that year to go solo.

Everything here moves at a narcotic crawl: dub-heavy bass, crackling breakbeats and keyboards hanging in the air like humidity. The title track aches slowly over a hypnotic groove, while "Karmacoma" is all murk and menace. The record had a second life, too: in 1995 DJ Mad Professor remixed the whole thing as No Protection.

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