#419 Portishead - Dummy (1994)
MUSIC HISTORY WRITTEN BY HEAD WRITER DJ MORTY COYLE:
Released on August 22nd 1994 on Go! Beat Records this is the debut album by the English Electronic band that helped popularize the genre known as Trip-Hop.
Producer and multi-instrumentalist Geoff Barrow worked as a tape operator at Bristol, England’s Couch House Recording Studio. There he met and worked with local Bristol Trip-Hop pioneers Massive Attack and Tricky and made a name for himself producing remixes for established artists like Paul Weller, Depeche Mode, and Primal Scream, and writing songs for Neneh Cherry.
Seeing his interest in Hip-Hop Massive Attack got Geoff a sampler and a computer to make his own beats.
Then in 1991 he met local pub singer Beth Gibbons during a coffee break at a UK works program that funded the retraining of unemployed people to start their own businesses.
Despite Gibbons being seven years older and from a farming community in Devon, England the two hit it off.
Barrow had still considered his music to be on a project-by-project basis with different contributors but with Gibbons’ honest and raw tortured lyrics, torch song melodies, and sultry singing style over Barrow’s vast musical ideas they realized they already had something special.
Geoff named them Portishead after the coastal town about eight miles West of Bristol where he grew up.
They worked extensively with Jazz guitarist, multi-instrumentalist, and producer Adrian Utley who had a room at Coach House Studio and was fifteen years older than Barrow although he wouldn’t become an official member until after this album.
The three of them plus engineer Dave McDonald used interesting and innovative recording techniques to put together songs with downtempo Hip-Hop beats with elements of Dub, eerie atmospheric sounds, Electronic instrumentation, and samples from old movie scores.
By then Adrian Utley’s friend, drummer Clive Deamer joined them in the studio for two sessions where his live drumming was sampled, looped, and sonically manipulated to achieve their unique sounds for most of the record.
Highly influenced by the composers of James Bond-era Spy movie and TV soundtracks like John Barry and Lalo Schifrin and Spaghetti Western composer Ennio Morricone they made a ten minute black and white film titled, “To Kill a Dead Man” featuring their music and starring Barrow and Gibbons.
The short film got the attention of Go! Beat Records who signed them on the strength of the soundtrack.
Even before their deal they had been compiling songs from recording sessions late at night or during other bands’ downtime.
Despite their new access to more modern professional recording equipment they didn’t record this digitally.
And although it sounds like they used a ton of samples there are only six from old records.
For the rest they recorded their own samples, had them pressed on vinyl records which they threw around and stepped on to make sound vintage, then spun on turntables like a DJ would.
After 18 months of creation, with a still of Beth Gibbons from their short film on the cover, and a title and mood taken from a 1977 British TV movie, “Dummy” was a melancholy masterpiece.
It caught on almost immediately and they, along with Massive Attack and Tricky, made Trip-Hop the “Bristol Sound.”
In England they went double-platinum, topped most critics’ year-end polls, and even won the prestigious Mercury Music Prize.
Before they even toured America they already sold 150,000 copies here.
All of this despite being notorious anti-pop stars, avoiding celebrity, and rarely giving interviews.
As a studio project they hadn’t really considered playing these songs live before their success made it an inevitability.
Beth’s intense shyness made her seem aloof and even occasionally miserable onstage which became part of their charm.
It took three years to follow this up with their self-titled second album in 1997 and then eleven years to release “Third” in 2008.
Portishead made an impact on so many artists including the Hip-Hop community that originally inspired them.
You can definitely hear and see their whole tragic, melancholy, vibe over big beats represented today in someone like Lana Del Rey.
All three members are still active musically and even though Portishead haven’t played live since 2015 or released anything since one ABBA cover for a soundtrack in 2017 their story might not be over yet.