Album: Dummy
Feels good to reach a time in the mid-90s when I was actively using my paper round money to buy CDs. Until then, I'd been a casual MTV fan of dance, indie and hip hop, but the music that fused elements of all these genres was trip hop and Portishead's Dummy was my entry point to this intoxicating new sound. I was too young to really appreciate Massive Attack's Blue Lines in 1991, though I did enjoy Unfinished Sympathy, and it was Dummy that took this Bristol sound in a very original direction and completely won me over. Music that blurred the lines between dance and indie, from the likes of Massive Attack, Portishead and Radiohead, is the 90s music that now sounds least dated and most interesting, compared to guitar revival genres like Britpop or grunge. That's not to say that trip hop didn't take inspiration from the past. Sour Times features a sample from music written by Lalo Schifrin in the 60s for an episode of Mission: Impossible (entitled Danube Incident). The sample features the distinctive sound of the cimbalom (hammered dulcimer), an instrument that was also used in the soundtrack to classic British spy film, The Ipcress File. Another distinctive sound that dominates Dummy is the hammond organ, evoking the legendary British gangster film, Get Carter, and this slightly sinister, claustrophobic atmosphere defines the album's aesthetic. The video to Sour Times is also a tribute to this bygone era, featuring clips from the short film, To Kill A Dead Man, which the band made prior to Dummy's release. On the strength of the soundtrack to this short film, Portishead won a recording contract and a still from the film (of Beth Gibbons sitting in what looks like an interview room) appears on the album's front cover.
Clever use of samples and the fine production work of guitarist Adrian Utley, along with drummer Geoff Barrow, helped to cast the album's seductive spell, but the essential element in Portishead's sound is the voice of Beth Gibbons. Her vocals were recorded on a hand-held tape recorder, and this lo-fi quality helps intensify the emotion, as though her regrets and painful memories of lost loves were a personal audio diary. The ghostly theremin sound on Mysterons and the disjointed breakbeats throughout only serve to underscore the perversive sense of loss and melancholy in Gibbon's voice. The lyrics are also worth singling out for praise, especially on the album's overlooked masterpiece, Roads, with Gibbons articulating the emptiness and loneliness she feels ("Stoned, in the morning light / I feel, no more, can I say / frozen, to myself / I got nobody on my side / and surely that ain’t right"). Other highlights are Strangers, with its festive jazz Weather Report sample, and Wandering Star, while the Johnny Ray sample of I'll Never Fall in Love Again on Biscuit is used to devastating effect. There's a constant anguish to Gibbon's voice that reaches fever pitch on Glory Box, against a backdrop of vinyl crackle, languid beats and mournful strings, as well as an Isaac Hayes sample of Ike's Rap II. The emotional intensity peaks with the line, "Give me a reason to love you / give me a reason to be a woman". There's little hope in her voice that she'll get one.
Artist: Portishead
Born: Bristol
Released: August 1994
Genre: Trip Hop
Genre: Trip Hop
Clever use of samples and the fine production work of guitarist Adrian Utley, along with drummer Geoff Barrow, helped to cast the album's seductive spell, but the essential element in Portishead's sound is the voice of Beth Gibbons. Her vocals were recorded on a hand-held tape recorder, and this lo-fi quality helps intensify the emotion, as though her regrets and painful memories of lost loves were a personal audio diary. The ghostly theremin sound on Mysterons and the disjointed breakbeats throughout only serve to underscore the perversive sense of loss and melancholy in Gibbon's voice. The lyrics are also worth singling out for praise, especially on the album's overlooked masterpiece, Roads, with Gibbons articulating the emptiness and loneliness she feels ("Stoned, in the morning light / I feel, no more, can I say / frozen, to myself / I got nobody on my side / and surely that ain’t right"). Other highlights are Strangers, with its festive jazz Weather Report sample, and Wandering Star, while the Johnny Ray sample of I'll Never Fall in Love Again on Biscuit is used to devastating effect. There's a constant anguish to Gibbon's voice that reaches fever pitch on Glory Box, against a backdrop of vinyl crackle, languid beats and mournful strings, as well as an Isaac Hayes sample of Ike's Rap II. The emotional intensity peaks with the line, "Give me a reason to love you / give me a reason to be a woman". There's little hope in her voice that she'll get one.
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