Massive Attack praised for making Gaza statement at Longitude

Massive Attack have received swathes of online praise for using a festival headline set to voice their support of Palestinians in Gaza. 

The trip-hop icons were headlining the Longitude festival in Ireland this weekend, when they used their light show and visual backdrop screens to show their opinion of the ongoing Arab Israeli conflict. 

"Gaza has been occupied or under restrictions since 1948," read one message during 'Battlebox'. 

The Irish Mirror also reports that the long-time supporters of Palestinian freedom also displayed the number of lives lost in Gaza during a performance of ‘Unfinished Sympathy' - which was met with huge applause from the crowd.

"To be honest there's a whole album of new material sitting in a studio at the moment which isn't finished and hasn't been played at all yet," said Rob Del Naja, known to fans as 3D. "There's one track I've done with Tricky... but I've gotta play it live with him really, and that's not ready for this tour yet as it would have just been a bit haphazard to throw it in there for these shows."

He continued: "At the moment I'm thinking that on this record we've been concentrating on songs and the inspirations for them. Working with Adam last year saw us hear a lot of old pop songs which I guess made us look at things in a different way.

"We've always worked under a DJ-based ideology incorporating the beats and rhythms first, so what we've been doing is just straight up songs and melodies, now whether that will fit into the history of the band, I don't know, but it's a different approach so it's interesting to see how successful that will be."