It’s been over a decade since Portishead released their second album, Portishead, and they’ve been sorely missed. The austerity, the haunting quality of Beth Gibbons voice, the machine gun quality of the looped percussion, all are superb examples of the very best of Portishead. Driving at night is the best time and place to listen to this album, swooping in and out of curves, gliding through mist caused by the day long heat and humidity of an evening rain.
Originally put together under a government grant, Geoff Barrow, a tape operator in a recording studio, Beth Gibbons, a local pub singer, and Adrian Utley, a jazz-trained guitarist of the highest caliber, filmed an espionage tinged film and recorded the soundtrack themselves for Go! Beat Records.
Trip-hop, they are not, though the trip-hop bands that emerged in their wake were most definitely based or influenced by the band, and the sound is easily recognizable in the programmed beats and vocals eerily laced within string arrangements and guitar melodies. Probably one of the best albums released this year.
Stand Out Tracks: “Hunter”, “Nylon Smile”, “The Rip”, “We Carry On”, “Deep Water”, “Machine Gun”
17 years ago
