''Ritual Spirit'' is an EP by British

trip hop Trip hop (sometimes used synonymously with " downtempo") is a musical genre that originated in the early 1990s in the United Kingdom, especially Bristol. It has been described as a psychedelic fusion of hip hop and electronica with slow temp ...

trio

Massive Attack Massive Attack are an English trip hop collective formed in 1988 in Bristol by Robert "3D" Del Naja, Adrian "Tricky" Thaws, Andrew "Mushroom" Vowles and Grant "Daddy G" Marshall. The debut Massive Attack album '' Blue Lines'' was rele ...

, released on 28 January 2016. It features

artist Tricky for the first time since the release of '' Protection'' in 1994, and also features Scottish hip-hop group

Young Fathers Young Fathers are a Scottish band based in Edinburgh, Scotland. In 2014, they won the Mercury Prize for their album ''Dead''. History Formed in Edinburgh in 2008 by Alloysious Massaquoi, Kayus Bankole and Graham 'G' Hastings, the group starte ...

, London rapper

Roots Manuva Rodney Hylton Smith, better known by his stage name Roots Manuva (born 9 September 1972), is a British rapper and producer. Since his debut in 1994, he has produced numerous albums and singles on the label Big Dada, achieving commercial success ...

and singer Azekel.

Background

A week before the release of the EP, the group released an iPhone application called "The Fantom", which remixed songs using heartbeat, location and time of day. The app contained snippets of the songs featured on the EP, and promised full functionality "soon".

Critical reception

''Ritual Spirit'' received widespread critical acclaim from contemporary music critics. At

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created by Jason Dietz, Marc ...

, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album received an

average In ordinary language, an average is a single number taken as representative of a list of numbers, usually the sum of the numbers divided by how many numbers are in the list (the arithmetic mean). For example, the average of the numbers 2, 3, 4, 7, ...

score of 81, based on 4 reviews, which indicates "universal acclaim". John Garratt of

PopMatters ''PopMatters'' is an international online magazine of cultural criticism that covers aspects of popular culture. ''PopMatters'' publishes reviews, interviews, and essays on cultural products and expressions in areas such as music, television, f ...

praised the EP, stating, "Pretty much everything that helped the band make a name for itself is on display for these four songs—the simmering tension of title track, the sample-happy soundtrack for urban decay on the opener 'Dead Editors', the hot and steady boil of 'Voodoo in My Blood', and the morose single 'Take It There' featuring the return of Tricky." Katherine St. Asaph of

Pitchfork Media ''Pitchfork'' (formerly ''Pitchfork Media'') is an American online music publication (currently owned by Condé Nast) that was launched in 1995 by writer Ryan Schreiber as an independent music blog. Schreiber started Pitchfork while working ...

gave the EP a favorable review, stating, "Massive Attack were always equally as good producers as they were curators; it's promising that, as much of their old sound as they've retained, they've kept this as well."

Track listing

Notes *"Dead Editors" contains a sample from " Watermelon Man" (1962) by

Herbie Hancock Herbert Jeffrey Hancock (born April 12, 1940) is an American jazz pianist, keyboardist, bandleader, and composer. Hancock started his career with trumpeter Donald Byrd's group. He shortly thereafter joined the Miles Davis Quintet, where he hel ...

Personnel

Massive Attack * Robert "3D" Del Naja – vocals, keyboards, guitar, programming, arranging, mixing, producer * Adrian "Tricky" Thaws – keyboards, bass, vocals, programming, mixing, arranging, producer * Grant "Daddy G" Marshall – keyboards, guitar, programming, arranging, mixing, producer Additional musicians *Euan Dickinson – sound engineer, programming, keyboard, guitar, arranging, mixing, producer *

Neil Davidge Neil Davidge (born 29 June 1962) is an English record producer, songwriter, film score composer, musician, and occasional backing vocalist. Once an associate of dance producers DNA, he is best known as the long-term co-writer and producer for ...

– keyboard, piano, drums, guitar, bass guitar, backing vocals, programming, mixing *

**Kayus Bankole **'G' Hastings **Alloysious Massaquoi *

– vocals (1) * Azekel – vocals (2) * Jeff Wootton – Guitar

Charts

References

{{Authority control Massive Attack EPs 2016 EPs Virgin Records EPs