NO PROTECTION is the Mad Professors dub version of the Massive Attack album PROTECTION. The U.K.'s master of futurustic dub gives it the full remix treatment. Although variously labeled as hip-hop, trip-hop and soul, the distinctive sound forged by Massive Attack often resembles a more innovative take on the lovers rock style of reggae that launched the careers of Caron Wheeler and Maxi Priest. (Massive Attack in turn put themselves on the map as a group with tunes voiced by old-time reggae crooner Horace Andy). Viewed in that light, it seems a natural decision for the group to invoke the time-honored Jamaican tradition of the dub album, a group of tracks (taken in this case from their critically acclaimed PROTECTION) reworked by a mixing board auteur like Mad Professor. A second generation digital offspring of original dub pioneers like King Tubby and Lee Scratch Perry, the professors concoctions bear only a distant relationship to the analog dub which emanated from Tubbys reel-to-reel and echo-chamber set-up. While spiritually akin to 70s dub, the sound here is transformed by Mad Profs digital production values, the acid house aesthetics of 1990s London, and of course unmistakable Massive Attack elements--like the fragments of Tracey Thorns torch song vocal that reverberate throughout.