Massive Attack Plan Hope Sandoval Collaboration for North American Tour

Massive Attack will spend May touring Canada and the US, marking the trip-hop originators' first North America tour in four years. The jaunt begins in Toronto on May 7 and ends at the Sasquatch Festival in George, Wa., on May 30, all of which is in honor of the Bristol duo's winter-released fifth studio album, 'Heligoland.'

Still, Massive's Grant "Daddy G" Marshall thinks there's no need for any fanfare -- it's just business as usual for the reunited band now. "We're literally right in the middle of a tour," he tells Spinner of the European dates that preceded the US ones. "Anyway, we were in America last year weren't we?" Some memory fumbling goes on before Marshall concedes that it might have been the year before and, finally, that he isn't sure.

This month-long trek will feature the duo -- which includes co-founder Robert Del Naja -- their longtime live band and Bristol-based singer Martina Topley-Bird and Jamaican singer songwriter Horace Andy. The album's high profile guests -- Hope Sandoval, Damon Albarn and Elbow's Guy Garvey -- are harder, though not impossible, to nail down for shows.

"Obviously the problem we have with the collaborators on the album is that these people are stars in their own rights. We never thought that we'd have the whole kick and caboodle out at the same time," says Marshall. "Damon, Guy and Hope, they're all busy people. We were fortunate to have Damon come onboard and do some shows with us in London, stuff like that. We're hoping to get something together with Hope when we're in the States. It should be sort of varied, you know. We're still negotiating which shows Hope will do, but hopefully New York and LA."

Mixing it up is what it's all about for Marshall. "It still goes back to the same sort of ethos as when we were DJs, a liquid base that changes," he says.