PORTISHEAD | DUMMY
Portishead’s Dummy is an undefinable debut album as important today as it was for the 90’s era. Brooding, spooky, and dreary the album infuses jazz, trip-hop, and unsettling electronics. While the world was lost in a weed haze of Green Day and Nine Inch Nails, Portishead swept into the world like a moody fog.
Dummy is rooted in Hip-Hop production using sampling, scraping, and loop-making techniques. Spy soundtrack samples and Ennio Morricone influences provide the backdrop for lead vocalist’s Beth Gibbons soft-spoken crooning delicacies. The slowly crawling electric guitar tremolo of “Mysterons” gives way to record scratches and a wandering theramine, immediately setting off the dark chilly atmosphere Portishead work in. It’s clear the album will make it impossible to reach for sunny days and cheeriness.
“Sour Times”, the band’s biggest and unexpected commercial success was a top 100 single and an MTV hit. The song uses a sample from an Argentine composer Lalo Schifrin “Danube Incident” from the 1967 album “More Mission: Impossible.” The band transforms the atmospherics into melancholic and wistful ballad that evokes Bond movies and Spaghetti Westerns in equal measure. The track would help solidify the template for what would begin to be called “Trip-Hop”, alongside acts like Massive Attack and Tricky eventually setting off a huge movement that would continue through the end of the decade, apexing into the more aggressive electronica movement.
The albums drum sounds, particularly the use of the ride cymbal and groove-laced beats reveal the bands obsession with the Blue Note era re-imagined for the digital era. “Wandering Star” and “Numb” could easily replace Gibbon’s vocals with lyrical rapping, but its her candlelit poetry that completes the picture. The 2010’s would re-introduce a love affair with soft-spoken female crooning over trippy beats kicked off by Lana Del Rey.
The dusty tremolo and wah guitar of “Roads” perfectly slips into the blooming string arrangements and trigger the vocals to open up but Gibbon’s is never able to fully scream or wail as she remains clenched and hushed with sadness. Even at her highest notes she doesn’t give up her cool. “Glory Box” ends the album with a newfound courage “I just want to be a woman.” Gibbons voice is more upfront than its been and it sounds like she’s having a better night. Her true fiery sexuality finally comes to life as the smoke clears from the hall.
The album is all spine-tingling and shiver-inducing at its peaks. Many imatators have come and gone over the years but no act has been able to re-create the disquieting tonal effects of Dummy.
This cocktail is a riff on a Gin Sour, the quintessential classic spirit of Bristol England where the band hails. The purple gin plays off the album cover’s deep purple-blue tones with also reflect the mood of the album, and the lemon adds the tartness of Gibbon’s emotional vocals.
