Hear this Robert Del Naja*
Massive Attack's Robert Del Naja, aka 3D, has been talking about the band's collaboration with David Bowie for their rendition of 'Nature Boy'. You can read a full transcript of the interview at the band's official site by simply clicking on the image above, but here follows a butchered excerpt to whet your appetite:
"We met Baz when he was making 'Romeo and Juliet' and Nellee (Hooper) did the music for the film. He'd been contacting us for the best part of a year about 'Moulin Rouge' and we'd always said no because we didn't feel we'd be right for the soundtrack. In late January, Baz phoned us up and said he'd met up with David Bowie in New York and mentioned that he'd asked us if we could do a track for the film. Bowie said that he'd love to work with us. We 'd met Bowie about four years ago at a gig in Tel Aviv and got on really well so we thought OK, that makes it into a bit more of an interesting scenario."
"The arrangement and the melody don't give much room to experiment so David recorded his track in New York, sent it to us on disc and we built the whole track around his vocal. We had an initial chat but everything after that was done by email. He's really into his technology so it was great to work with him in that way....Neil (Davidge) and me constructed the whole thing piece by piece. We just used the strings, some keyboard sounds and some strange little samples here and there. It was an experiment but it worked out really well; we just kept it simple and we're really pleased with it."
If you haven't already, you can find a teaser of this intriguing track in Tuesday's news.( 04/17/01 NEWS:DON'T HAVE A MASSIVE (heart) ATTACK )
*Del Naja? Zimmerman? What's a surname between friends?