Pioneering trip-hop group Massive Attack has participated in a unique cosmic collaboration, sending their music to the moon and back as part of an innovative art exhibition in London. The Bristol-based duo contributed a cover of “Everything Is Going According To Plan,” a 1988 song by Russian punk band Grob, to the “Art After Dark: Piccadilly Un:Plugged” exhibition organized by the Piccadilly-based Art Of London gallery.
The cosmic transmission utilized “Earth-Moon-Earth” (EME) technology, with signals beamed to the lunar surface and then received back by the Lovell Telescope in Cheshire. According to the exhibition’s website, the returned recordings are altered during their journey, creating “an otherworldly soundscape that connects Earth with the cosmos.”
“‘Everything is going according to plan’ was written by Yegor Letov in the 1980s and was a withering critique of the Russian state,” Massive Attack shared in a statement. “It was performed live in Russian language by Massive Attack in 2013 as part of a collaborative show with filmmaker Adam Curtis.”
The project featured contributions from several other notable artists, including The Avalanches, Moses Boyd, Pussy Riot, Ayse Hassan of Savages, Mirrored Fatality, and EOBIONT. Professor Simon Garrington from the University of Manchester explained the technical challenges involved: “To receive speech and music this way requires powerful radio telescopes, such as The University of Manchester’s giant Lovell Telescope. What we hear combines our human creativity with signals from the moon and the cosmos beyond in a truly unique way.”
This cosmic musical experiment represents Massive Attack’s first new music since their 2010 album “Heligoland.” The duo, consisting of Robert “3D” Del Naja and Grant “Daddy G” Marshall, has hinted at releasing new material in 2025, with Del Naja noting last year that delays were due to a “dispute at the record label.”
While this lunar musical transmission is groundbreaking, it joins a history of music in space. Last year, the Odysseus spacecraft carried recordings from artists including Elvis Presley, Marvin Gaye, and Bob Marley to the lunar surface, though these were not transmitted back to Earth. Meanwhile, Imagine Dragons recently attempted to broadcast their song “Children of the Sky” from the moon, but technical difficulties with the Athena spacecraft prevented the transmission.
Massive Attack will perform two UK shows in June: at Manchester’s Co-Op Live arena on June 5 and at LIDO festival in London’s Victoria Park on June 6, which will be London’s first fully battery-powered festival.
