Craig Armstrong met Nellee Hooper from Massive Attack while recording in the US at the beginning of the 1990s, just as he had begun to create orchestral scores. The meeting led to further collaboration, of which the best known is for the hugely popular album Protection – a languid, dubbed-out, brooding sound that would come to define the trip hop genre.
Armstrong arranged the title track as well as the song Sly, and co-wrote Heatmiser and Weather Storm. The latter would become one of Armstrong’s best-known works, revisited on 2004’s Piano Works and on his 1998 solo album The Space Between Us. This, along with his 2002 record As If to Nothing, was released on Massive Attack’s own label Melankolic.