About

Massive Attack and Tom Waits release a new collaboration “Boots on the Ground”, with an exclusive to vinyl B-side provided by Waits – a droll and sardonic spoken word piece entitled “The Fly”.

An accompanying film created by Massive Attack (working with US photo artist thefinaleye) will be available via the band’s digital platforms. This evocative, high-intensity montage portrays a momentous American epoch that is yet to be named, and comes in the aftermath of the largest public protests in American history - focused on opposition to ICE raids, the militarisation of domestic forces, and state authoritarianism.

“Boots on the Ground” is the first Massive Attack music distributed under a Spotify exemption policy. Further releases are scheduled prior and subsequent to the band’s run of live performances, including their forthcoming European tour and summer festival headlines.

In keeping with the band's sector leading efforts to reduce carbon emissions across both live activity and recorded output, Massive Attack have partnered with Good Neighbor to produce an ‘EcoSonic’ pressing. Manufactured using 100% recycled PET (rPET) rather than traditional PVC, the record is fully recyclable and produced via an energy-efficient injection moulding process - a significant shift in record manufacturing. Packaging follows the same approach, with sleeves made from 100% recycled, FSC®-certified paper stock and outer slipcases produced from recycled polyethylene. — (via Label)

—

Massive Attack’s “Boots on the Ground” doesn’t do much, but it casts a long shadow. Listen even once and you may find its unvarying loops cycling unbidden through your mind, hours afterward—as, say, you stand numbly under the shower or sit blank-eyed at a stoplight: that stumbling trash-can beat, those brooding piano chords, and Tom Waits, sounding more haggard and unhinged than ever, croaking out the song’s titular refrain. Interspersed with that mantra-like phrase, he offers fragmentary visions from the front lines of America’s forever wars as glimpsed through the night-vision goggles of the nation’s jackbooted shock troops: “I kill a brown man I never-ass knew/Choked on spit and then he turned blue.” Waits is one of popular music’s great interpreters of hard-luck characters, but we’ve never heard him play a role like this. — (via Pitchfork)

—

Massive Attack and Tom Waits have teamed up to release a new joint single entitled ‘Boots On The Ground’ - a stark, pulls-no-punches protest song that comes accompanied by ‘The Fly’, an exclusive vinyl B-side spoken-word piece from Waits.

Speaking about the collaboration, the trip-hop legends - who last year headlined London day fest LIDO - have said: “It’s a career honour to collaborate with an artist of the magnitude, originality and integrity of Tom, but this track is arriving in an atmosphere of chaos.

The track arrives just a few days on from the arrest of the group’s Robert Del Naja over the weekend, after he attended a pro-Palestine protest in London and, alongside hundreds of fellow demonstrators, peacefully held up a sign expressing support for the proscribed organisation Palestine Action. — (via DIY Magazine)

—

— 45RPM, 12" single
— Pressed on blue bioplastic vinyl
— Housed in 100% recycled, FSC®-certified paper stock sleeve

Vinyl Tracklist
A Boots On The Ground
B The Fly

↓
Label: Play It Again Sam
Format: Vinyl, 12", 45 RPM, Single, Bioplastic, Limited Edition, Blue
Released: 2026
Genre: Electronic, Rock, Non-Music
Style: Trip Hop

File under: Downtempo
⦿