Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Contents
A Note on Sources vii
Dramatis Person ix
From the Ether 1
Memory 19
Shock 49
Intimacy 66
Solitude 86
Narcotic 105
Alienation 123
Solace 141
Resonance 161
Loss 180
Siren 202
Works Cited 225
Acknowledgements 233
vii
A Note on Sources
Research for this book involved interviews with a
number of sources, including discussions with Dummy
and Portishead sound engineer Dave McDonald, and
Portishead friend and collaborator Tim Saul. Quotations
from Geoff Barrow, Beth Gibbons, and Adrian Utley
were gathered from an extensive range of interviews and
articles written throughout the bands history, particu-
larly from the period between the release of Dummy
in 1994 and Portishead in 1997. All of these sources are
annotated throughout and are listed at the end of the
book.
ix
Dramatis Person
Po r t i s he ad
Geoff Barrow producer, turntables, drums
Beth Gibbons vocals, lyrics
Adrian Utley guitar, co-producer
Dave McDonald sound engineer
Co nt r i b ut o rs and c o l l ab o rat o rs
Andy Smith crate-digging
Clive Deamer drums
Gary Baldwin Hammond
Neil Solman Fender Rhodes
Richard Newell drum programming
Andy Hague trumpet
Tim Saul friend and collaborator; involved in
pre-production sessions; part of Earthling
Miles Showell mastering engineer
Alexander Hemming director of short flm To Kill
a Dead Man and the frst Portishead music videos
D U M M Y
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
Memory
Bristol Violence and BMX bikes Hip-hop
A Victorian seaside resort Childhood experimentation
Music, paint, and dance The Dug Out Abandoned
warehouses The downland Burt Bacharach and drum
machines overheard from trash cans The Buffalo Posse
Sour Times Instruments ancient and modern Films
shot through lampshades Seven Blood-Stained Orchids The
making of tea Late night crate-digging Meeting over tea
Songs about Gandhi London Bands named after projects,
bands named after retirement homes
Bristol. Historically one of the largest cities in England,
Bristol was in the eighteenth century a hub of the
trans-Atlantic slave trade; a hub of mercantile trade and
commerce. In the post-war period the city like many
other urban centers across the U.K. saw immigration
from territories previously part of the British Empire,
including Afro-Carribean immigration to the St. Pauls
neighborhood. It was the site of one of the U.K.s signif-
icant civil rights struggles after a boycott in 1963 against
the Bristol Omnibus Company led to national anti-
discrimination legislation. A city with visible extremes
D U M M Y
20
21
22
23
24
really.
31
It was all about hip-hop. He was breakdancing
at 11; at a certain point he stopped drumming and
started D.J.-ing, mainly in my bedroom.
32
Second wave
hip-hop acts like Run-D.M.C., M.C. Shan, or Roxanne
Shant.
33
It was nothing special, and my equipment was
cheap, he recalled. It wasnt a club thing, just a little
something for me and my friends.
34
Andy Smith, later Portisheads tour D.J., was one
of the only other people in Portishead with the same
tastes. He ran a hip-hop night in the towns youth
club, and there met Barrow We got talking over
our mutual love of Run-D.M.C. and Public Enemy.
35
Smiths scratching style was self-taught, and when he
met Barrow the two would compare technique and spend
endless nights listening to records.
36
Speaking to National Public Radio in 2008, Barrow
remembered the frst time he heard Public Enemys
Rebel without a Pause:
I heard this as a young teenager in a nightclub in Bristol.
It was an underage nightclub so you could get there
without drinking and stuff. I kind of knew Bum Rush the
Show before. It was a fairly alright nightclub but it was
just about kind of trying to get girlfriends and do the kind
of thing you do when youre a teenager. The D.J. used to
they didnt have a D.J. booth; it was a time when they
31
Breihan 2009.
32
Uhelszki 1995.
33
Vibe 1995.
34
Vibe 1995.
35
Heller 2009.
36
Jones 2006.
R . J . W H E A T O N
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26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
kinds of madness.
53
It was an approach, an aesthetic,
rather than simply an instrumental end result. Utley said,
all theyve got is a Fender Rhodes and an echo unit.
They havent got masses of technology, so they record
something really dodgy with that and then fip the tape
over so its backwards. Its really inventive, a little bit crap
and just sounds really vibey.
54
The Ipcress File aesthetically so similar to Dummy in
its angular, highly stylized approach and in its insouciant,
deadpan tone is quoted in the bands soundtrack
to their short flm, To Kill a Dead Man. Alexander
Hemming, the director, remembers meeting the band
and his reaction to tracks from Dummy:
I said they reminded me a little of soundtracks of movies
from the 70s and then we spent the next few hours
talking about the movies we liked such as Ipcress File
and Get Carter. Not just the soundtracks but also
the visuals too. The way odd camera angles were used
and also shooting through or past something in the
foreground, whether it was a window, windscreen, mirror
or anything else for that matter, the view often obscured
by something else.
To Kill a Dead Man almost serves as a tour of the bands
soundtrack infuences. And the opening chords to Riz
Ortolanis gorgeous theme to the 1971s Confessione di un
53
Gladstone 1995.
54
Miller 1995.
R . J . W H E A T O N
37
38
* * *
Massive Attack were soon working out of Coach House
to complete their debut album, Blue Lines. Massive
Attack were three former members of the Wild Bunch:
Grant Marshall, Robert Del Naja, and Andrew Vowles
Daddy G, 3D, and Mushroom. By that time Cameron
McVey and Neneh Cherry had established their Cherry
Bear Organization, which had provided funding and
recording time at their London house to the band. Key
tracks from Blue Lines Safe from Harm, One Love,
Unfnished Sympathy, Lately were recorded at
Coach House.
Blue Lines was an incredibly infuential, genre-breaking
record, establishing a template for what would later
controversially and imperfectly become known
as trip-hop. Slow tempos; minor keys; female voices
soaring above funky organ loops and resonant basslines.
Blue Lines retains an edge and a charm entirely its own;
a range of infuences, textures, backgrounds far broader
than almost everything that followed it; a commitment
to minimalism that remains bracing and fresh; a pleasure
in its own texture that is genuine, not characterized by
the exhibitionism of later imitators. There are directions
the genre did not take. Some moments remain aston-
ishing: the opening of Five Man Army, which takes
the drum sample from the start of Al Greens Im Glad
Youre Mine and allies it to a dub bassline, a transform-
ative contrast to the hip-hop context in which the break
is normally used. The impeccably gorgeous Unfnished
Sympathy, which radicalizes the drum machine samples
that, in other records from the time, are now uselessly
R . J . W H E A T O N
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40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
Shock
A cacophony of metaphors Grunge breakbeats
Strangers The air under assault Public Enemy
Hard-bop jazz More tea A 79 Chevy
Caprice Classic The Roland TR-808
The resonant qualities of the human lung
Student housing Floors and ceilings
Church bells and curfew Highest tide
Numb was released in June 1994, the frst single from
Dummy. It was distributed to D.J.s frst as a white label.
The sleeve featured a still from To Kill a Dead Man, as
would Dummy itself and the singles for Sour Times,
and Glory Box. On the cover of Numb the image is
almost abstract a detail of a forearm, a hand, a piece of
medical tubing. A hand raised, presumably to the head, in
an apparent gesture of despair, helplessness. The image
is grayed-out against a deep and foreboding blue stain;
the singles sleeve a fat unreadable cream. No intimation
as to the songs nature or to its musical workings. An art
object, distanced from its contents.
The title track was accompanied on the A-side by two
remixes, entitled Numbed in Moscow, and Revenge of
D U M M Y
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51
52
53
54
55
* * *
Adrian Utleys original inspirations had included Jimi
Hendrix (the sound was just so vicious and brilliant)
and Black Sabbath; he had played and recorded in
genres including disco and reggae.
85
But by the early
90s he had impeccable credentials on the British jazz
scene, having played with scene mainstays Tommy Chase
and Dick Morrissey, along the way working alongside
organist Gary Baldwin (who plays Hammond on three
of Dummys songs). He founded a band called The Glee
Club with Clive Deamer (whose drums appear on seven
of Dummys tracks). He had relocated to Bristol in 1986,
relishing the vibrancy of its jazz scene.
86
Nonetheless
he had begun to feel the constraints of jazz as a creative
medium, overdetermined in some way by the towering
innovations of the giants of his inspiration. He told a
Dutch magazine in 1997:
Its true that I played jazz for a long time with all sorts
of people. But I stopped because I can never equal my
heroes John Coltrane and Miles Davis. Ill never be as
good or as spiritual as they were thirty years ago. Thats
why I thought it more useful to contribute something to
the present-day music, to start something new.
87
* * *
85
NPR 2008.
86
Johnson 1996, p. 168.
87
Watt 1997.
D U M M Y
56
57
58
Its Yours was one of the frst songs to take the charac-
teristic kick drum sound of the 808 and sustain it,
exposing the deep booming bass sound of which it was
comprised essentially a sine wave, a deep hum, with
very little pitch content.
Rick Rubin used the sound in productions for the
Beastie Boys, Run D.M.C., and LL Cool J. Miami
producers such as Amos Larkins began using the sustained
808 kick sound on tracks including Double Duces
Commin in Fresh and M.C. A.D.E.s Bass Rock
Express (both 1985), reportedly discovering the sound by
accident and being impressed by the ecstatic reaction of
audiences to test pressings.
92
Producer Mr. Mixx used the
sound on 2 Live Crews Throw the D in 1986.
These records were the founding statements of the
Miami Bass genre cars, explicit lyrics, explicit imagery,
bass. Bass. Travis Glave recalls:
your car rattling so damn bad that you cant see out your
rear view mirror. You could feel it in your chest and in your
gut. You would tie something on your mirror just to see how
much you could get it to jump when the 808 kick drum hit
Your trunk was useless with all the speaker equipment
in it. A box with Twelves or Fifteens, an amp big enough
that you needed two batteries to run it, if you didnt, your
headlights would be dimming to the sound of the bass.
93
The sound was on every major hip-hop release by 1987,
1988; heavily in use by producers like Marley Marl and
92
PapaWheelie 2005.
93
Glave 2008.
R . J . W H E A T O N
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60
61
62
63
64
65
66
Intimacy
The beehive The state of the art Magpies
Vienna Just bubbling all day Nina Simone and Ray
Charles Grand Upright Music, Ltd. v. Warner Bros. Records
Inc. The right vibe A guy with a cutting press A good
steak The Woolsworth It Could be Sweet The
integumentary system Not a traditional songwriting
situation Vampires in New York
State of Art Studios is located on an industrial trading
estate on the east side of Bristol not in the most
salubrious part of town; its a bit down at heel really, says
Tim Saul. In 1993 it was very new, well equipped, and,
for a demo studio, very large. Dave McDonald, having
helped owner Julian Hill build the studio, was familiar
with the facilities:
I think it was probably at the beginning of, you could say,
the budget recording revolution, where you didnt have
to buy a 24-track 2-inch machine or you didnt have to
go out and remortgage your house to buy a Neve desk
and all that kind of stuff. It suddenly became feasible that
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68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
Solitude
Of rural origins Talk Talk The listener a composer
A diarist Wandering Star
The planets in their courses A teenage runaway Witch
music The noise from the bar Control and fate A
promise fulflled Melody Photography and mystery
Electronic lullabies The younger generation
Beth Gibbons has conducted so few interviews that it is
diffcult to surface information about her background.
Among the facts available: she was born in 1965 in
Keynsham, a small town halfway between Bristol and
Bath. Her parents divorced when she was young; with
her three sisters she grew up on her mothers farm, about
20 miles from Exeter. Work; solitude.
She told Stuart Clark in 1995 about the expected
trajectory of her life:
Coming, as I did, from a fairly isolated rural community,
the expectation was that Id meet someone locally, get
married and have kids. It was all very rustic and cosy but
there werent that many people at home I got on with
R . J . W H E A T O N
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88
Lisa Gerrard;
134
she told a Dutch interviewer in 1995
that in my early twenties I kind of went into an indie
mode of like Sinead, Sugarcubes, Cocteau Twins, Pixies;
I used to like Janis Ian when I was younger. While
admitting that probably those were my infuences,
she was nonetheless tentative about a direct aesthetic
correlation: I basically came out of the other end of
whatever, of youth maybe, and I dont know what was
an actual major infuence.
135
It is possible to hear aspects of these artists in Beth
Gibbons voice; it is also possible to hear, as vocalist Helen
White observes, Billie Holiday, Dinah Washington, Ella
Fitzgerald; Sarah Vaughan, Sandy Denny, Joni Mitchell.
The range of infuences points to a highly personal
approach, rather than one driven by extensive or delib-
erate training; indeed, she suggested to Ben Thompson
that Im not technically a very good singer if anyone
says I am I know they dont know what theyre talking
about. If I wanted to be, Id have to give up smoking and
have lessons.
136
Her experience prior to meeting Geoff Barrow had
included some live experience with local bands. She had
also connected with Paul Webb, bassist for Talk Talk, who
she met when he was conducting auditions for the band
which was to become .O.Rang. She appears amid the
sprawl of noise that opens that bands 1994 album Herd
of Instinct; she and Webb would collaborate on 2002s Out
134
van den Berg 1995.
135
Gibbons 1995.
136
Thompson 1998, p. 221.
R . J . W H E A T O N
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90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
an air pocket.
160
Additional sounds and samples would
be added to the track sometimes entirely transforming
the original materials. Gibbons cited the Ill never fall
in love again sample on Biscuit as something that was
added after the vocal was complete. The sample makes
the song but it was actually an afterthought.
161
* * *
Dummy is an album of contrasts, and Gibbons lyrical
maturity serves as a foil to the almost reckless ambition
of the albums sonic world formally experimental,
sometimes circushouse and ramshackle in its innovation
which is plainly the product of a young mind.
Musing on her professional relationship with Geoff
Barrow 7 years younger than her in an interview
in May 1995, she spoke about relationships with younger
people:
however unintentional it might be, there are times when
you feed off their youth to curb your own cynicism.
Youve no right to do that, of course, but when I
meet people like Geoff, and other men his age, their
perspective seems nicer. Theyre of a slightly different
generation, so theyve had different infuences and seem
more aware of them. Youve got to watch it because,
remember, they havent lived the extra 10 years that you
have. You cant do their growing up for them.
162
160
Young 1998.
161
Clark 1995.
162
Clark 1995.
105
Narcotic
Trip-hop Lessons Thinkin of a master plan
Acid jazz Label creep I cried to dream again Lullabies
and drug songs Its a Fire
Breaths and lipsmacks Railway stations and
Nol Coward Impossible sounds
A vocal performance The big moments
Suspect of certainties Vocal frying Oracles
In the June 1994 issue of British dance magazine Mixmag,
an article by Andy Pemberton described trip-hop:
a deft fusion of head-nodding beats, supa-phat bass and
an obsessive attention to the kind of other-wordly sounds
usually found on acid house records. It comes from the
suburbs, not the streets, and with no vocals you dont
need to be American to make it sound convincing. All you
need are crazy beats and fucked up sounds and youve got
the most exciting thing to happen to hip hop in a long
time.
163
163
Pemberton 1994.
D U M M Y
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109
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111
112
113
114
115
116
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118
119
120
121
122
123
Alienation
A plenitude of releases The trip-hop moment
A plenitude of labels Making out and drinking tea
Numb Blade Runner The absence of rules
That sounds too normal Trapdoors
Roy Orbison The General Assembly of the International
Music Council of UNESCO Muzak Shopping carts
The avant garde Hearing voices
Massive Attacks second album, Protection, released
in September 1994; Trickys Maxinquaye released in
February 1995. In May, Earthling comprised of
Portishead collaborator Tim Saul with rapper Mau
released Radar.
1994 through 1997 saw, among many others,
releases by other bands from Bristol including The
Federation, Purple Penguin, Statik Sound System, Monk
& Canatella, Invisible Pair of Hands (which included
Portishead associates Jim Barr and John Baggott), Alpha.
Smith & Mighty fnally had a full-length album release
in 1995, Bass is Maternal.
D U M M Y
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125
breakbeats
beats & breaks
acid jazz
jazzy beats & breaks
blunted beats
abstract hip-hop
dance
chillout
lounge
nuJazz
lo-f.
Some of these became, later, discrete sub-genre labels in
different contexts. All of them translated poorly overseas,
particularly in the U.S. where the genre complexity that
then and still characterizes British dance music was
impenetrable, and boring, to a mainstream music media
surveying a much larger terrain from a much higher
altitude. Electronica became the catch-all label, with
trip-hop as its moody emo variant.
All of this, to one degree or another, was aimed at
a market broadly understood to want an accessible
electronic music, to some extent derived from beat-based
production, paced somewhat slower than hip-hop, and
without too many distracting aggressive elements.
It was also a market served somewhat concurrently
by the big beat genre faster, louder, foregrounding
the acid house and psychedelia infuences. Even drum
& bass (formerly known as jungle) reached mainstream
commercial success for a brief period, culminating in
Bristol-based Roni Size and Reprazents Mercury Prize-
winning New Forms.
D U M M Y
126
* * *
Among this the ubiquitous presence of Dummy. For
a brief moment it was possible to hear the album in
nightclubs and bars, in peoples homes, to read about it
in newspapers and magazines without the exposure
in one of those arenas alienating another. Perhaps this
was in part to do with the bands reserve, their unwill-
ingness to engage in the more nakedly commercial
pursuit of popularity. They did not seek over-exposure.
Yet the album was everywhere. As Helen White recalls,
Everyone suddenly liked them.
In February 1995, Entertainment Weekly quoted Gen
X expert Michael Krugman on Dummy:
Its music thats as appropriate if youre making out at
home, or home alone pining And isnt that pretty much
why people listen to Tony Bennett and Frank Sinatra?
177
It became impossible to escape the album, particularly
after its initial fourishes of chart success in the U.K.
it reached #3 in January of 1995 and #2 in May it was
awarded the Mercury Music Prize in September 1995.
It was suddenly background music everywhere: peoples
apartments; bars; cafs; clothing boutiques.
It seemed to accommodate so many uses. One post to
the 4AD-L mailing list noted in January 1995 that:
Every song is close, its a very private album. Its the
kind of album you can snuggle up in your sofa and drink
177
Entertainment Weekly 1995.
R . J . W H E A T O N
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128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
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139
140
141
Solace
The sky at war Rehabilitation Consolations
The Fender Rhodes Fusion A dog Vintage
instruments Frankenstein repairs Cassettes Roads
Earth-shattering vibration A working mans club band
and the London Philharmonic Orchestra The right syllables
Communication Mannequins and dummies
Public assembly Post-apocalyptic drought Grief
The sensation of evil Fireworks
The skies over Europe, 1943. The Boeing B-17 Flying
Fortress. The Consolidated Aircraft B-24 Liberator.
Death within reach. The skies afame, blackmorrowed;
in the kindling of cities and shipyards and factories below
history itself infammate. The souls of thousands a-tinder
and, in the skies above, airmen in the thin clasp of an
atmosphere amok with fak and the riot of war.
Rehabilitation. In Greenboro, North Carolina, at
the Army Air Forces Basic Training Center, Harold
Rhodes, former piano instructor, now Private, builds
small 29-note keyboards using aluminum tubing salvaged
from the wings of B-17s. The Army Air Corps lap model
D U M M Y
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143
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145
146
147
148
149
150
the morn meets the dew and the tide rises. There are
many moments which seem to voice the emotional
everyday, albeit from a sorrowful, lonely, self-regarding
perspective: Its just Im scared; got hurt a long time
ago; I cant understand myself anymore. But they are
almost always followed by something that undercuts the
familiarity, that moves towards imagery that is almost
surreal, that plays with the texture of words (sensation;
sin, slave of sensation), or that uses near-rhyme to
present a coy humor (But Im still feeling lonely
feeling so unholy).
The albums lyrics are so elliptical that it is as if select
words or phrases have been removed; as if they are the
associative output of some emotional state, the narrative
order of which is lost forever except by what it suggests to
the listener. These songs are not clear narratives. Instead
they accumulate; they become the product of fragments
which may mean something different to each listener.
In this patchwork construction the lyrics are not unlike
the production process that went into the underlying
tracks sounds that seem to cohere together through
some alchemy, some internal logic the workings of which
remain obscure. Reading the lyrics without the music
is unsettling; yet restored to the music the strangeness
seems to recede, as if neutralized by an otherworldliness
of another order.
Beth Gibbons has described her song-writing
accordingly:
its almost the atmosphere you create by juggling the
words round rather than what you actually say. Its not so
much a matter of a beginning or an end as a feeling which
R . J . W H E A T O N
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152
* * *
The opaque nature of the albums lyrics is in keeping
with the inscrutability of the title Dummy which
suggests multiple meanings but defes fnal defnition.
Dumb: a mute inability to communicate. Dummy:
a pacifer. Dummy: an artifcial personality, something
adjacent or replacement to a real identity: a mannequin
that can be adorned with changing personalities. As if
ones identity must adjust in different contexts, adapt to
different audiences; as if identity is an experiment, always
contingent, subject to experimentation.
And, against this, dummy, an insult, a self-chastising
stupidity a refusal to feel self-pity but never an unwill-
ingness to engage in self-refection and anger.
Somehow in these meanings there is the feeling of
a lack of agency of being acted upon rather than
acting. And a struggle to become aware that it is delusion
to believe that identity is the dominion of the self,
rather than like the album something collectively
assembled from the materials around and before us.
* * *
Dummys songs explore the self. The accused self of It
Could be Sweet. The isolated, misunderstood self of
Numb. The abandoned, suffering self of Pedestal.
Lost, exposed, world-weary. Trapped, left behind.
Self-distrusting. But those sentiments even when
clearly expressed are never the story of each song;
they never center a narrative, never dominate. Instead
they are surrounded, beset, thicketed, by the confused,
R . J . W H E A T O N
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154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
Resonance
Beirut An airstrike Well get back to you
Permission Chet Baker Jazz quartets and slowed-down
hip-hop Studio trends Beach guitar
Advertisements and imitators Swinging London Cover
versions Noise Punk Two mics and a drum kit A bush
radio An amazing sucking sound Pedestal
EQ and compression Snares
A refusal to submit to exile
Zeid Hamdan was 15 or 16 when he frst heard Dummy.
He was in Beiruts legendary B-018 club, named for the
apartment from which owner Naji Gebran used to run
a club named Musical Therapy. B-018 is now located on
the site of a former quarantine camp, the location of a
massacre at the outset of Lebanons limitless civil war. In
the middle of the 90s it was on the industrial edge of the
city; unlicensed, remote; known to play the really edgy
music as soon as it was released, recalls Hamdan.
Hearing Glory Box he was stunned by the
arrangement: minimal; the vocals really in front
Compared to the Arabic music, which is really loaded
with arrangements, I felt that Portishead had something
D U M M Y
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168
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173
174
* * *
Pedestal is characteristically sinewy in its arrangement,
not least in the economy of its introduction: the shuttling,
shuffing pulsebeat, a kick drum so thick and dense it
sounds like a mutiny in the republic of silence. Then the
turntablism skids across the surface of the song before
igniting around it the hissy detritus of the ride cymbals.
The bassline swings around the bottom of song as if
tethered to it, an abductor muscle, pulling away at the
beginning of every measure.
The compression-induced pumping that sucking
sound that Dave McDonald describes is plainly
audible on the ride cymbals in this song, rebuking
the natural tendency of those sounds to recede amid
their own glitter and hiss. Its a radical sound. Theres
all these rules for dynamics processing, suggests Jay
Hodgson. Youre not supposed to compress to the point
where the pumpings really obvious. Well they do it
really obviously. Its pumping.
It almost sounds as if the ride cymbals are being
played in reverse. The effect distributes across the
frmament of the song a gorgeous meniscus of sound,
a dome of residual fzz, opening the middle of the song
for the plunging, suspended bass line and the two alter-
nating harmonics that vault, sway across the top of it. Its
dreamily seductive.
The lyrics on Pedestal are among the most opaque
in the album, although as elsewhere they acquire in
the accumulation of images and the emptying-out of
emotional commonplaces (You abandoned me Lost
forever) a kind of cumulative emotional weight, in
R . J . W H E A T O N
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176
177
178
179
* * *
Musicians as diverse as video game soundtrack composer
Akira Yamaoka (Silent Hill) and Kanye West have cited
Portishead as an infuence.
225
It is next to impossible to
detangle the varied infuences of the stronger formative
downtempo artists Portishead, Massive Attack, Tricky,
D.J. Shadow, Dan the Automator, D.J. Krush, and others;
nonetheless the strength of that collective infuence is
clearly exerted upon a generation of producers including
Blockhead, RJD2, Danger Mouse, and Diplo.
226
* * *
Zeid Hamdan continues to face cultural resistance in
his native Lebanon. The countrys media class persis-
tently resists his electronic arrangements with Arabic
vocals. And with Lebanon lacking effective copyright
enforcement, he collects little from the limited exposure
his music and his remixes do receive. He depends upon
support from abroad: international licensing of his work
for flm; tours to Italy, London. But he lacks domestic
success.
So somehow I consider I havent succeeded musically. I
dont want to go and live abroad. My real challenge is
that my people like it and it becomes here a success. So I
will stay here until it does.
225
Paiva 2006.
226
Levinson 2005.
180
Loss
Biscuit A creative transformation Sick of love Song of the
South Genre exhaustion The problem with trip-hop The
Bristol scene The denial of tea Ducking
A martial art Mono The trappings of success The
rules Doubt A way out Portishead Films shot through
cymbals Burnout Another strange record
Biscuit is the slowest song on Dummy at 126 beats
per minute. It is the least popular song from Dummy
receiving the least attention on Twitter; showing the
fewest number of listens on Last.fm (accepting that Its a
Fire is handicapped by its exclusion from some editions
of the album). Ahead of the slow rise into the magnetic
presence of Glory Box, which follows it, Biscuit
brings the album to its knees.
Biscuit is a diffcult song in spite of its relatively
open lyrics. The albums techniques and methodologies
are stressed and exhausted to the point of decompen-
sation, a system in failure. In its last 70 seconds it drags
behind it a weathered, distressed vocal sample from
Johnnie Rays Ill Never Fall in Love Again. The horn
R . J . W H E A T O N
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182
183
184
185
186
187
* * *
None of us ever believed in the thing trip-hop, Geoff
Barrow told the B.B.C. in 2010.
230
The label was deeply
unpopular with many of the musicians to whom it was
applied. Adrian Utley remembered it as a journalistic
catchphrase for generic music that came after us and a
plethora of bands that were forced into sounding like us
because we were successful.
231
The label seemed contrived, something imposed upon
artists from wildly disparate musical backgrounds. To
some it was reductive, suggesting a slavish relationship
to hip-hop an imitation, a failure to effect a trans-
formative treatment of infuences or a cheapening
of that genres vibrant dominant infuence. For others
there were suspicious racial overtones, perhaps the impli-
cation that a predominantly black art form was in some
ways being made more accessible by white musicians.
Moreover the association with background ambience for
bars, lounges, and dinner parties suggested a particular
class trajectory: hip-hops rough-edged, often militant
street attitude (and origins) softened and smoothed for a
bourgeois palette.
Barrow had always downplayed attempts to claim a
cultural tradition so associated with African-American
culture. I would never make out like I was a hip-hop
kid, he told Michael Goldberg. Because Im a little
white kid from England. Im not living the lifestyle. Its
disrespectful [to] people who have either chosen to live
230
B.B.C. 2010.
231
Gundersen 2008.
D U M M Y
188
189
190
191
192
resonance of the frst kick and snare hit; and (iii) the
second snare hit ducks everything which precedes it.
241
What is remarkable about the number and the complexity
of these ducking choices in Dummy is how diffcult
they would have been to undertake before the software
sound-processing plugins now available via digital audio
workstations like ProTools. At the time, Hodgson
recalls, it was mysterious how they were getting a lot of
these things to happen.
Dave McDonald admits that the mixing process was
arduous, manual:
We were not using automation. We didnt have
automation for these mixes. The artistic thing you do
many runs of it until you fnd the mix that you like. But
as youre actually doing those mixes youre fnding out
what works, what works, what works Like a martial
art. Its like a pattern. You learn the moves to what makes
that track sound correct and right. Once you learn that
pattern you never forget it. You can probably put me in
front of the desk now with those tracks running and I
would do exactly the same things.
* * *
Dummy has little in the way of stereo separation, in part
because of the limitations of the sampling hardware
the band had used to build the tracks. Dave McDonald
recalls that: If you were to sample stuff in stereo on an
241
Hodgson 2010, p. 97.
R . J . W H E A T O N
193
194
195
196
197
198
199
* * *
Following the Portishead tour, the band took an extended
hiatus after personal and creative burnout. Over the
following years, Geoff Barrow spent time in Australia; he
later told The Guardian that during that time I thought
that every idea that I had about music was fairly boring. I
had no direction to go in no real spark.
255
He founded
a record label, Invada, with Australian hip-hop producer
Katalyst. Tim Saul co-produced with him 2003s striking
McKay, a marriage of the kind of beats production that
were into, but with an authentic American soul vocalist.
Adrian Utley worked on soundtracks and contributed
to Goldfrapps 2000 album Felt Mountain. He also worked
on Beth Gibbons Out of Season, her collaboration with
former Talk Talk bassist Paul Webb. Other Portishead
alumni appear on the album, including John Baggott,
Gary Baldwin, and Clive Deamer. Tracks like Spider
Monkey particularly in its live performances
suggest some of the directions that 2008s Third would
take.
Dave McDonald returned to live work Air, Sigur
Rs, Junior Senior, Florence + the Machine, Adele. I
like that one take and I like the energy, he says. Its an
artistic thing. As opposed to a technical thing.
* * *
Desire for new material from Portishead continued.
Live bootlegs circulated online, as did tracks purporting
255
Lynskey 2008.
D U M M Y
200
201
202
Siren
Associations Internet sex threads Languorous
lovemaking A taxonomy of desire Glory Box
A sample A Christmas party Timing
A man with a megaphone Traditional gender roles
A glory box Meanings A night in the city
Climax Noise and nightclubs
A mastering session The divination of success Elder
siblings Contradictions Connections
Among the song lyrics and shout-outs, the following
are terms, phrases, and topics commonly or occasionally
associated on Twitter with Dummy and its songs:
mesmerized
a bit gloomy
#songsthatleadtosex
spy movies
in tears
#hot
pure sex
R . J . W H E A T O N
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
* * *
At its most intimate, Dummy remains richly associative;
for all its misplaced categorization, its submergence into
the musical environment of the mid 90s, it retains, in its
warmth and its edge and its intimacy and its strangeness,
the ability to connect people. Across borders; through
walls.
There is a solitude in its throat, but a community at its
heart.
If you listen to the Dummy album, says Nikki
Lynette, it does not sound like they were trying to
defne the times. It doesnt sound like they were trying
to defne this whole sub-genre. It doesnt sound like they
were trying to relate to millions and millions of people.
They just did.
225
Works Cited
Alexandrovna, Larisa. lart pour lart: Portisheads new album,
Third. at-Largely, April 4, 2008. Online: http://www.
atlargely.com/atlargely/2008/04/portisheads-new.html
Attali, Jacques. Noise: The Political Economy of Music, trans.
Brian Massumi (Manchester: Manchester University Press,
1985).
Barrow, Geoff. Interview for Freebase magazine, 2000. Online: http://
freespace.virgin.net/sour.times/interviews/geoff_int2.html
B.B.C. 6 Music. Essential Albums of the 90s: Portishead
Dummy, November 19, 2010. Presented by Steve Lamacq.
Online: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00w04tq/
Essential_Albums_of_the_90s_Portishead_Dummy/
Benjamin, Walter. The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical
Reproduction. In Illuminations, ed. with an introduction by
Hannah Arendt (trans. Harry Zohn) (London: Fontana Press,
1973).
Bernstein, Jonathan. Uneasy Listening, Spin; Vol. 10, No. 11,
February 1995.
Breihan, Tom. 5-10-15-20: Geoff Barrow. Pitchfork,
December 8, 2009. Online: http://pitchfork.com/
news/37306-5-10-15-20-geoff-barrow/
Burton, Robert. The Anatomy of Melancholy (New York, NY: New
York Review of Books, 2001).
Clark, Stuart. Never Mind the Bollocks. Hot Press, May, 1995.
D U M M Y
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
org/web/20000903074908/www.addict.com/issues/1.03/
Cover_Story/Portishead/
Utley, Adrian. IRC Chat. Online: http://freespace.virgin.net/sour.
times/interviews/adrian_chat1.html
van den Berg, Erik. Interview with Beth Gibbons. Oor, No. 6,
April 8, 1995. Translated by the author.
Vibe. Portishead. June/July 1995.
Watt. Interview with Adrian Utley. No. 54, December 1997.
Wiederhorn, Jon. Attitude and Armageddon: A Chat with
Portisheads Geoff Barrow. Microsoft Music Central, undated.
Online: http://kotinetti.suomi.net/heikki.hietala/Interviews/
Geoff%20Attitude.htm
Wilder, Eliot. Endtroducing (New York, NY: Continuum, 2005).
Young, Rob. Tangled Up In Blue. The Wire, No. 198, December
1998.
233
Acknowledgements
Portishead are known for their reluctance to give inter-
views, preferring instead to let the music speak for itself.
I hope that this work will not impede that objective but
instead suggest new perspectives on Dummy and on the
other music discussed in this book. This book owes a
great deal to the journalists and music critics who have
interviewed and covered Portishead since 1994. I have
noted all sources as transparently as possible throughout.
Two invaluable online resources are Phead (http://phead.
org) and Heikki Hietalas [P] (http://kotinetti.suomi.net/
heikki.hietala/index.htm).
I am inexpressibly grateful to numerous people
for their time, patience, and insight, including but
certainly not limited to Michael Almereyda, Tom
Astor, Marc Bessant, Steve Berson, Amy Clarke, Sean
Cranbury, Zeid Hamdan, Alexander Hemming, Jay
Hodgson, Gwen Howard, Jay-Jay Johanson, Belinda
Kazanci, Nikki Lynette, Nightmares on Wax, Bram
Schijven, Miles Showell, Anna Shusterman, Rachel
Talalay, Ira Tam, Lee Thomson, Dayna Vogel, Helen
White, and Andy Wright. And, most particularly, to Dave
McDonald and Tim Saul.
D U M M Y
234
235
* * *
For further material, including a discography and further
listening resources, please visit http://www.rjwheaton.
com/dummy or http://www.facebook.com/dummy333.
The author can be found online at http://www.rjwheaton.
com and on Twitter as @rjwheaton.
Also available in the series:
1. Dusty in Memphis by Warren
Zanes
2. Forever Changes by Andrew
Hultkrans
3. Harvest by Sam Inglis
4. The Kinks Are the Village Green
Preservation Society by Andy
Miller
5. Meat is Murder by Joe Pernice
6. The Piper at the Gates of Dawn
by John Cavanagh
7. Abba Gold by Elisabeth
Vincentelli
8. Electric Ladyland by John Perry
9. Unknown Pleasures by Chris Ott
10. Sign O the Times by
Michaelangelo Matos
11. The Velvet Underground and Nico
by Joe Harvard
12. Let It Be by Steve Matteo
13. Live at the Apollo by Douglas
Wolk
14. Aqualung by Allan Moore
15. OK Computer by Dai Griffths
16. Let It Be by Colin Meloy
17. Led Zeppelin IV by Erik Davis
18. Exile on Main Sreet by Bill
Janovitz
19. Pet Sounds by Jim Fusilli
20. Ramones by Nicholas Rombes
21. Armed Forces by Franklin Bruno
22. Murmur by J. Niimi
23. Grace by Daphne Brooks
24. Endtroducing by Eliot
Wilder
25. Kick Out the Jams by Don
McLeese
26. Low by Hugo Wilcken
27. Born in the U.S.A. by Geoffrey
Himes
28. Music from Big Pink by John
Niven
29. In the Aeroplane Over the Sea by
Kim Cooper
30. Pauls Boutique by Dan LeRoy
31. Doolittle by Ben Sisario
32. Theres a Riot Goin On by Miles
Marshall Lewis
33. The Stone Roses by Alex Green
34. In Utero by Gillian G. Gaar
35. Highway 61 Revisited by Mark
Polizzotti
36. Loveless by Mike McGonigal
37. The Who Sell Out by John
Dougan
38. Bee Thousand by Marc
Woodworth
39. Daydream Nation by Matthew
Stearns
40. Court and Spark by Sean Nelson
41. Use Your Illusion Vols. 1 and 2 by
Eric Weisbard
42. Songs in the Key of Life by Zeth
Lundy
43. The Notorious Byrd Brothers by
Ric Menck
44. Trout Mask Replica by Kevin
Courrier
45. Double Nickels on the Dime by
Michael T. Fournier
46. Aja by Don Breithaupt
47. Peoples Instinctive Travels and the
Paths of Rhythm by Shawn Taylor
48. Rid of Me by Kate Schatz
49. Achtung Baby by Stephen
Catanzarite
50. If Youre Feeling Sinister by Scott
Plagenhoef
51. Pink Moon by Amanda Petrusich
52. Lets Talk About Love by Carl
Wilson
53. Swordfshtrombones by David
Smay
54. 20 Jazz Funk Greats by Drew
Daniel
55. Horses by Philip Shaw
56. Master of Reality by John
Darnielle
57. Reign in Blood by D. X. Ferris
58. Shoot Out the Lights by Hayden
Childs
59. Gentlemen by Bob Gendron
60. Rum, Sodomy & the Lash by
Jeffery T. Roesgen
61. The Gilded Palace of Sin by Bob
Proehl
62. Pink Flag by Wilson Neate
63. XO by Matthew LeMay
64. Illmatic by Matthew Gasteier
65. Radio City by Bruce Eaton
66. One Step Beyond by Terry
Edwards
67. Another Green World by Geeta
Dayal
68. Zaireeka by Mark Richardson
69. 69 Love Songs by L. D. Beghtol
70. Facing Future by Dan Kois
71. It Takes a Nation of Millions to
Hold Us Back by Christopher R.
Weingarten
72. Wowee Zowee by Bryan Charles
73. Highway to Hell by Joe Bonomo
74. Song Cycle by Richard
Henderson
75. Kid A by Marvin Lin
76. Spiderland by Scott Tennent
77. Tusk by Rob Trucks
78. Pretty Hate Machine by Daphne
Carr
79. Chocolate and Cheese by Hank
Shteamer
80. American Recordings by Tony
Tost
81. Some Girls by Cyrus R. K. Patell
82. Youre Living All Over Me by
Nick Attfeld
83. Marquee Moon by Bryan
Waterman