Portishead

i remember seeing the video of "sour times" on mtv. it had nothing to do with the video which is on youtube these days. it was a kind of live video where you could see beth gibbons sing irc. i was totally blown away, i had never heard of the band before and nobody of my friends knew them. i was afraid to forget their name and that the band would be soon forgotten, they were totally obscure. the sadness in her voice grabbed me completely and i thought that this music was made only for me. i would have never thought that they would have so much success later on but if i remember well it took a couple of months before they really took off. of course i am very happy that they made it.

maybe it was on 120 minutes as that was more or less the only programme i folowed on mtv.

i picked up both original Sour Times cd singles (99p each) with some insane remixes/retakes, and fell hard.
still think the 'airbus reconstruction' (sounds like an early studio live version) is the best version.

KEXP is playing through the album with song-by-song commentary from Barrow and Utley: full interview audio stream and text excerpts here

https://www.kexp.org/read/2019/8/22/portisheads-geoff-barrow-and-adrian-utley-breakdown-dummy-25-years-later/

lol at automated transcription

Andy Smith, who was an old maid from Portishead,

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/21/arts/music/portishead-dummy-anniversary.html

Barrow would really prefer not hearing about the time(s) you fucked to Dummy.

Shouldn't have made so many slow jamz

still think the 'airbus reconstruction' (sounds like an early studio live version) is the best version.

airbus is an entirely different band! I love the hell out of that version as well.

well i never, i had no idea.
ta for the pointer.

He gave them a tape with a click track on it and Beth Gibbons’ vocal, refusing to play them the full song until they’d written and recorded the music.

Wow I never knew this either, what a great idea

I still haven't heard Airbus on their own though, to my shame.

I picked up a cheap used vinyl copy of Dummy about a week after release from the Hackney branch of Music & Video Exchange, where it was filed under Hip-Hop.

my favourite kind of "hip-hop". probably they confused hip-hop with trip-hop...

Everybody is saying "Sour Times" "Sour Times" "Sour Times". The first PH song I heard was "Glory Box", and many times over, and the contrast of Beth Gibbons's cutesy delivery on the verses and her belting out the choruses reminded me of.. Jewel. And so I ignored this band until "All Mine" came out-- again, with the cutesy delivery? but irresistible. I don't think I listened to "Dummy" in its entirety until 2000. "Glory Box" was a misleading single! It works on the album sequence but on its own there is nothing to distinguish it from like.. Sneaker Pimps or whatever.

I was in music limbo, cut off from radio and new releases, between the summer of 94 and end of 96, so only heard these guys once they had gained overexposure and kept being played in bars or student parties, which instinctively turned me off. For the longest time, I did not distinguish between 'Glory Box' and 'Hell Is Round The Corner'. It's "All Mine" and the 2nd album that brought me in.

except Sneaker Pimps came out 2 years after and were an obvious knockoff xp

i mean it's really not fair comparing them to groups that came out and copied their whole thing .

yeah, I also only really got into Portishead after hearing 'All Mine'. I'd heard some stuff before then (probably mostly Glory Box), but it wasn't enough for me to buy their album

Oh for sure! I just had no idea about the rest of the album

I actually love that Sneaker Pimps album, which doesn’t sound much like Portishead tbh

I always like Morcheeba, who similarly got tossed in as imitators but I thought sounded totally different.

The Roseland New York DVD, which you can get for a few quid, appears to come with all the films (To Kill A Dead Man etc) and a bunch of the first 2 album's videos.

https://www.discogs.com/Portishead-Roseland-New-York/release/178075

I don't remember how I first heard about Dummy (or what song I heard first, etc.) -- but I was an early adopter, and was ob-sessed with it. I made a lot of mixtapes for friends that year, with Dummy on one side and Massive Attack on the other.

I was gonna say, that Sneaker Pimps album rules.

"Spin Spin Sugar" rules (both the original and the Armand Van Helden speed garage mix)

i was huge into Dummy from the get-go. I bought it the same day along w/Definitely Maybe at a CD shop in Rockford IL.

WHINEY: People seem to like having sex to this record.

hope this was fact-checked

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/21/arts/music/portishead-dummy-anniversary.html

buhhh @ subs running an interview with Geoff Barrow, illustrating it with a photo of Barrow and Beth Gibbons, and captioning the photo only as showing Gibbons

Here's another (better?) one.

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2019/aug/24/portishead-dummy-wasnt-a-chillout-album-25th-anniversary-geoff-barrow-adrian-utley-beth-gibbons?CMP=share_btn_tw

The Nils Frahm slagging is hilarious.

Seems both have a pretty big chip on their shoulder.

GB on Twitter sure is an old curmudgeon. Very off-putting.

i do agree with them that billie eilish rocks and nils frahm sucks

Utter codswallop https://t.co/ERuHEQ1GkI

— Geoff Barrow (@jetfury) August 25, 2019

Codswallop is a new one to me.

Olivia Colman has covered Portishead's brooding classic Glory Box in aid of Children In Need.

https://www.binaural.es/noticias/volveran-portishead-en-2020-con-un-nuevo-disco-bajo-el-brazo/

primavera sound's musical director claims he's heard they might have a new album next year. don't want to get my hopes up too much but...

yeah, I've been speaking to Geoff about this, off the record, and it's almost finished.

Ohwwwww

Fuck yessssssss

that was a bad joke post btw.

Sshhh, let my self-delusion be.

Just got an out of nowhere email from their mailing list saying hey man I know you unsubscribed but MAYBE WE HAVE A BIG ANNOUNCEMENT COMING, so: credible

WRONG THREADS WHOOPS that was about the avalanches, i'm tired and also dumb

bumped into beth gibbons the other week, she cawed like a rook and spun her hat three times, i think the new album's a lock you guys

Did you wish her 'good morning Mrs Magpie'? Their latest may never see the light of the day otherwise, and it'll be all your fault.

i uttered an old saxon oath while crossing my thumbs, we're all golden

I recall seeing them at Coachella and they mentioned on stage after the set that there wouldn't be nearly as long of a wait for their next one as there was for Third. Hmmmphf

tbf 'SOS' dropped in like 2015

Oh that's right

SOS doesn't count. Covers don't count.

Geoff Barrow's transhemispherical hip-hop group Quakers is vibrating back to life: a full second album featuring 31 rappers across 33 tracks is out in November, and they released a beat tape mixed by the Australian part of the group, Katalyst (as Supa K) a few weeks ago. That's on bandcamp and vinyl, or as a 50-minute collage video.