Bleep

Not many have the power to stop the music industry in its tracks by so much as lifting a finger, but pretty much any news coming from the Portishead camp in their over three decade career has induced an anticipatory hush, and it’s all thanks to the seismic signature they ingrained on music history with their debut album Dummy. Indeed, it’s hard to imagine a time when Portishead’s commanding presence on sonic culture at large wasn’t known; they made trip hop and the Bristol scene household names in 1994, and have endeavoured to dismantle genre boundaries ever since.

Dummy spawned many imitators and influencees, and for good reason: as classic albums go, this is up there with the best of them, a trip hop groundbreaker that no doubt defines a decade. Yet where other vocalists let the vibrato rip and the acrobatics go wild, Beth Gibbons is poised and considered, every syllable enunciated with precision, notes held steady with twice the emotion packed into them. Where other producers are captivated by the album’s neo noir aesthetic, Geoff Barrow and Adrian Utley unceasingly searched for a new, disruptive sound, combining disparate influences in a hip hop collage with innovative recording technologies and instruments found off the beaten path to create unerringly timeless, minimalist compositions.

All three of their talents combined, Portishead ensured that each track on Dummy would be a cathartic gut punch, a rocking speaker blower, a tremor on the dancefloor, and a goldmine of compositional uniquities all in one. Even decades on, it all sounds remarkably fresh, and remains emotionally potent as each nook and cranny contains fractured cries sending shivers down the spine, evoking a celestial force of haunting. Dummy kickstarted a canonical triptych of albums enabling the trio’s individual careers, legacies, and achievements to follow, making Portishead one of UK’s most definitive, enduring musical voices.