PORTISHEAD

JEREMY ALLEN

DUMMY (Go! Beat, 1994) The old proverb “mighty oaks from little acorns grow” was never truer than when Beth Gibbons and Geoff Barrow met on an Enterprise Allowance scheme in Bristol in 1991. Tapes were exchanged in their tea break and a new band soon emerged. Portishead would inhabit their own demimonde on debut album Dummy, which celebrates 30 years this year. With multi-instrumentalist Adrian Utley soon on board, they changed the way records were made going forwards, inspiring the warm crackle of the needle drop on a thousand intelligent hip-hop tracks, and opening the floodgates to a deluge of ersatz downtempo imitators (we’ll not blame them for the latter). The coffee-table copyists couldn’t replicate the melancholia or come close to the attention to detail though. There’s an idiosyncratic methodology…

You're reading a preview of

Prog Italia (Digital) - 1 Issue, Issue 149

DiscountMags is a licensed distributor (not a publisher) of the above content and Publication through Zinio LLC. Accordingly, we have no editorial control over the Publications. Any opinions, advice, statements, services, offers or other information or content expressed or made available by third parties, including those made in Publications offered on our website, are those of the respective author(s) or publisher(s) and not of DiscountMags. DiscountMags does not guarantee the accuracy, completeness, truthfulness, or usefulness of all or any portion of any publication or any services or offers made by third parties, nor will we be liable for any loss or damage caused by your reliance on information contained in any Publication, or your use of services offered, or your acceptance of any offers made through the Service or the Publications. For content removal requests, please contact Zinio.