STACK #210 Apr 2022

MUSIC FEATURE

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PORTISHEAD Dummy In AlbumTales, Bryget Chrisfield hits you with some juicy nuggets of wisdom surrounding classic records. This month it’s the utterly miserable charm of Portishead’s debut album Dummy. Words Bryget Chrisfield

Year 1994

Cooking up tunes in Neneh Cherry’s kitchen While working as a trainee tape operator on Massive Attack’s ground-breaking Blue Lines record (1991), Portishead’s Geoff Barrow met Neneh Cherry’s hubby/manager Cameron McVey (musical alias:

Dummy , played on nine of the tracks and co-wrote eight songs, he didn’t become an official Portishead member until shortly after this trailblazing LP’s release.

Portishead’s multi-Platinum-selling, Mercury Prize-winning debut album Dummy – which is widely credited for popularising trip hop (even though the term was first coined in relation to DJ Shadow) – came out the same year as Blur’s Parklife and Oasis’s Definitely Maybe. Dark, strange and often deliberately harmonically discordant, Portishead’s sonic landscape could not have ventured further afield from Britpop’s typically sheeny guitar-pop, with Beth Gibbons’ delightfully desolate vocals plunging listeners into unfathomable emotional depths.“‘Cause nobody loves meeeeeee, it’s true/ Not like you do,” Gibbons laments during Dummy ’s striking, somnambulant second single Sour Times . Still the perfect ‘Teary Tuesday’ soundtrack almost 30 years later, no vinyl collection is complete without Dummy .

That time the fire brigade was called to Portishead’s studio The low-budget Bristol studio Portishead typically used was given a tongue- in-cheek name: State of the Art (since it contained a lot of vintage gear). Barrow and Utley were heavy smokers in the early days – reportedly punching at least a coupla packs

Booga Bear) – the record’s executive producer. McVey then hired Barrow to work on Cherry’s second album, 1992’s Homebrew (for which Barrow co-wrote

and co-produced the track, Somedays ), which is how Barrow and Gibbons came to record their early song ideas in Cherry’s London kitchen. The dole brought Portishead together In 1990, Barrow and Gibbons – aged 19 and 26 respectively – met during an

Still from the Glory Box clip

of darts per day! – with Barrow hilariously recounting, during an interview, that time when the firies showed up: “We actually opened the door because there was no fresh air and no window. So, we opened the side door one day, and it looked like it was on fire. The fire brigade came!” Portishead initially released a short film Portishead’s debut release was actually a short film titled To Kill a Dead Man (1994). As well as composing its original score, all three Portishead members also starred in this black-and-white spy noir. Clips from To Kill a Dead Man feature in the Sour Times music video and Dummy ’s cover art is actually a still of Gibbons, taken from this short. Utley’s spy-film fascination undoubtedly bled into Portishead’s music over the years, with samples on Sour Times credited to Argentine composer and creator of the Mission Impossible theme Lalo Schifrin (from 1967’s More: Mission Impossible ) amongst others.

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Enterprise Allowance training day at the dole office. Shortly afterwards, the pair recorded Dummy album track It Could Be Sweet , about which the jazz guitarist/future- Portishead member Adrian Utley – then aged 34 – recalled during an interview: “I remember somebody opening the door upstairs and me hearing It Could Be Sweet . I was all, ‘F-ck me, what is that?’ Just hearing the sub-bass and Beth’s voice – it was unbelievable; like a whole new world that was really exciting and vital.” Even though Utley co-produced

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Geoff Barrow and Beth Gibbons of Portishead, early ‘90s

14 APRIL 2022

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