Dummy

Day 6 of Albums you must hear before you die.. I was initially disappointed because I looked at the name of the album and it says “Dummy” by Portishead... I thought, damn, what in the hell is a Portishead first and secondly, I thought, I wish it had been something I’m more familiar with. I look at the genre and it’s titled trip-hop, and although I don’t typically like the idea of “genres” when I listed I understood. Man... As soon as I clicked the play button on the first song, I was taken on a beautiful, sexy, smokey, spooky and one of the most sonically pleasing trips that I have ever been on.. Without tripping on acid, of course. (I’ve Never taken acid before by the way, I just could never find any). All jokes aside, this is one of those things that when I first start listening to it and start to let it sink in, I automatically want to know who in the hell produced this!? It’s AMAZING! It’s like 80’s and early 90’s hip-hop/boom bap music had a baby in a film with James Bond played by Isaac Hayes, directed by Martin Scorsese. It’s a cinematic experience that gives you chills. It’s also SO hip-hop that I almost expected Nasir or Andre 3000 to start spitting witty lyrics at certain parts of the songs. They are all crafted so well! All the samples, sound effects, record scratching, the soundtrack to this trip-hop era is so damned satisfying. The arrangements in these songs are so superbly laid out and even though the girl that seems like she’s singing in an old jazz club filled with cigarette smoke with the sweetest voice, that when certain hooks and bridges come in and out that you can only focus on the sounds. Dummy is so well produced, engineered, performed and presented on a platter of gold. Better yet, platinum. Actually four times platinum. Winner of some of the most prestigious awards in music. There’s a saying, you only need two turntables and a microphone, and that is TRUE! But.. If you’re in 1994 in England with access to so many great rhythm and blues albums and jazz records to dig through in the crates, and then be able to use the technology of the time to sample them, and THEN have the obscenely talented singer Beth Gibbons on that side of the fore mentioned microphone, crooning to the notes played from the weeping guitar of Adrian Utley.. Really, it’s a perfect blend of music that makes this album my favorite of them so far at day 6. It caught me by surprise.. Now to give you my favorite songs. I never wanted to skip a single song on all three listens that I had today. If you don’t like this album from the very start it’s not for you. Don’t like the first song? Listen to the very last one, Glory Box. It’s my favorite song and it samples black 007 Isaac Hayes (RIP KING) Now if you don’t like THAT song, we can’t be friends. CANNOT. I also like Mysterons, Numb.. Shit I like them all! I need someone to shame me for not knowing about this group for all these years!! Come at me bro! Last but not least, that producer that I wanted to know so much about, but still don’t because I just learned of Portishead (still a dumb name) yesterday, well, his name is Geoff Barrow, the DJ that you hear creating all these amazing backing tracks for this album that Beth could lyrically mold with her voice like creative hands molding wet clay. I don’t know shit about either of them as people and I want to keep it what way. I prefer the mystique I get from this record. What’s magic without mystery? Music is magic. I’m still excited to gush over some of the great music that I already know so well, after this album, a record that will stay in my rotation from here on out. I’m more excited for the rest of the 1001 albums to hear before you die that I don’t know at all. ✌️

Cities have this ever present dull roar. After having always lived in the country or the suburbs, I remember my first few nights living in an apartment in the city. Getting used to that roar took some time. The city is a living thing. So many people and vehicles and things going on. And yet among it all its easy to feel isolated and alienated from it. People people everywhere, but no one to connect to. This album has an ever present bass and sub bass component. That dull roar*. On top of it, the mid range and high end are very sparsely populated. Anything that lives in that space is delicate and vulnerable. The vocalist isn't singing along to chords. There is no accompaniment. The vocals stand completely on their own. And it really sells the feeling of loneliness, the kind of loneliness borne of a desire to make new connections, and the creeping doubt as to whether that's even possible anymore. The sense conveyed is that I used to have relationships, and I used to understand my surroundings, and it used to be so easy to make friends. The nostalgic elements to the music sell this too. The dirty vinyl sounds, the cimbalom, the theramin, all evoke the past. While the delicate vocals represent the present. Why can't it be easy like it used to be? I'm surrounded by all these people. Is something wrong with me? Or is something wrong with everything else? How can it feel, this wrong From this moment How can it feel, this wrong 'Cause a child, roses light Tried to reveal, what I could feel I can't understand myself Anymore 'Cause, I'm still feelin' lonely Feelin' so unholy Who am I, what and why 'Cause all I have left is my memories of yesterday Oh these sour times 'Cause nobody loves me, it's true Not like you do I don't believe its sad or mournful. This isn't a funeral. It hasn't given up. Not yet. There's just this desire for something, and the question as to whether its even a valid desire anymore. "Did you really want?" On the path toward alienation, but not quite there yet. "Give me a reason to love you." Prove my desires are worth having. Please. Because I've about given up on them. * I just wanted to point out how much the bass of Wandering Star sounds just like distant air brakes from a truck, something you'd hear lying in your bed in the city, but I have no idea how to fit it in.

I’ve tried a few times over the years to understand what makes this such a beloved record and it just won’t click. In fact, it seems like every time I give this record a shot, I end up liking it less than I did the previous time I heard it. Its a very monotone record to me, with songs that don’t do much to differentiate themselves from each other. This one’s just not for me.

There's not much else out there that sounds like Portishead. I come back to this album all of the time and never seem to get tired of it. Plus, how is it possible that Portishead was never used for a Bond movie??

This album is SO good! This is the first album I got to the end and immediately started listening from the beginning again. I’ve never actually listened to Portishead, so this is a revelation. Her voice, the ambience, the emotion, it’s all so good. Favourite track: “It’s a Fire.”

Classic alert! They have a pretty unique sound as a band, only problem I have with them is they never really stray from this sound. IMO this is the only portishead album you really need to listen to, the others all sound the same but worse

J'ai appris grâce à cet album que je n'aimais pas du tout le trip-hop, ce genre musical ayant émergé au début des années 1990, dans la région de Bristol. Pourtant, vous savez probablement que lors d'une kermesse s'étant tenue dans mon école primaire en 2005, j'avais représenté la ville de Bristol à la toute fin du passage de ma classe avec deux amis moins talentueux. Nous étions le clou du spectacle. À la fin du numéro, j'étais censé déchirer mon T-Shirt noir préalablement découpé et maladroitement scotché à cet effet et le lancer dans la foule. Seulement au moment où la musique s'arrêta, le T-Shirt ne se déchira pas malgré mes nombreuses tentatives. Je dus l'enlever de la façon la plus standard qui soit, avant de le jeter dans une foule qui criait au scandale. Depuis ce jour, je hais la ville de Bristol ainsi que la plupart des courants musicaux qui y ont émergé.

a masterpiece. easily in my top ten albums of all time i listen to this album as uch as any other album i can think of.

Great album. Beth Gibbon's voice is sublime.

Wandering Star is the first song by Portishead I listened to and the song that hooked me. Listening to this album took me back and reminded me what I was so into their sound.

I love trip hop, and this is the grandaddy of all trip hop albums. Great vocals, even better sampling and sound design, just a masterpiece.

Can't recall too many households in the late 90s that didn't have a copy of this album in them. I mean, there's a reason why Glory Box was a smash. Whole album is so classy. Impeccable production. Beth Gibbons (whom I confused with Beth Orton) being a total weapon also helps.

Bad

I've listened to this album many times. If you're in a work situation and you need some groovy and mellow music to help focus, this one is a banger. I enjoy the vocals being set in the music instead of out front. It's laid back and urgent at the same time. In my opinion it's an excellent album and has no skips. Put it on repeat and get on with your day.

This has always been the defining trip hop album to me, though I may be slightly biased, because the 1st streaming service I ever listened to in the 90s had a chill channel that may as well have been called the Portishead channel. The production is elegant and creative (some of the samples are way out there), they never stray too far from their moody, haunting sound, but the song writing is great so they don’t need to, and I never tire of Beth Gibbon's voice.

Dark, moody, understated. Lovingly arranged, wonderful restrain. Just enough negative space to allow songs to breathe. This album has outsized influence on 90s downbeat sound. If there's one criticism it's that incorporating the scratching record sounds definitely dates the record.

Wow, talk about being stuck under a rock. I’ve seen this album several times, usually on lists of best/popular albums. And I don’t know why but I never really looked into this album and that was a major mistake this album is great, it’s haunting and beautiful. The instrumentation is wonderful and of its time but in a pleasant way. Honestly I go on and on about this album. Go give it a listen.

God if this album had been out 10 years earlier when me and my mates were smoking quite a lot I’d of never got out of the house!! It’s so chilled and chilling I can just drift off while it plays away in the background. Love the tunes, love the voice, it’s dark but light at the same time, I think?! Anyway a pearl amongst swine!

Their second album is better, but this is the one that seemed to haunt everywhere for a while in the mid-90's, and distinguished its aesthetic so strikingly that it felt almost its own cliché on arrival. These songs manage to be delicate and juggernaut at the same time. They knew what to do with this aesthetic: the songs are strong. The only song on the album that drops below the bar is It's A Fire. Analogue production, digital quality control! I am startled by how far Glory Box's popularity on Spotify outstrips the rest of the album. The guitar riff is stunning, channeling Cream-era Clapton after a few pints of brandy. I remember Tricky moaning about how Dummy was basically his song Aftermath, and that was it. I both hear what he's saying - Aftermath is stellar - and think he's very, very wrong. The aesthetics are different, and whereas Tricky went for linear, minimalist stretches which flaunted his digital lifts, Portishead were more obviously analogue, defacing their vinyls and using weirdo, UFO instrumentation, and had time for more formal song structures - robots versus cyborgs. Returning to this album, I rate it above Massive Attack's efforts, and think it might be the zenith of that Bristolian spree. Will wait for Maxinquaye to appear on the list, as I haven't heard that in decades.

This is what music is supposed to be. Beautifully composed, edited and sung. I can see how this was the springboard for trip-hop and I thoroughly enjoyed the sampling. Overall, this is nearly a perfect album.

is it pronounced "portis head" or "porti-shed"?

No. 240/1001 Mysterons 3/5 Sour Times 3/5 Strangers 3/5 It Could Be Sweet 3/5 Wandering Star 2/5 It's A Fire 4/5 Numb 2/5 Roads 3/5 Pedestal 2/5 Biscuit 3/5 Glory Box 3/5 Average: 2,82 Kinda felt neutral about this.

Not as good as the later album but still impressive.

A nice treat from the collection, as I've owned this album for a long time, and have always enjoyed listening to it. It's also impressive hearing the difference between this much earlier album and recently getting their later "Third" album from after their long hiatus; "Dummy" is definitely more what I think of Portishead sounding like, but now I can appreciate both albums better I think. It's hard to pick just a few favorites from the album, as I enjoy nearly every track (although I'm quite partial to "Roads" as the highlight, and "It could be sweet" and "It's a fire" are probably the relative duds on the album), and I also enjoyed seeing the three videos, the well-produced Bond-like "Sour times" (apparently taken from a 10-minute film they created, "To Kill a Dead Man"), the somewhat disturbing home-movie-esque "Numb", and the final track's noir-nightclub "Glory box". I also really appreciate the almost steampunk-like/film-noir-like vibe to the entire album, and I'm really impressed to read that they created their distinctive sound by recording various instruments and sounds on vinyl, introduced a bunch of static/noise by walking all over the discs (and playing through a broken amplifier), and then recorded the samples on a record deck (in addition to their samples from vintage albums). I'm a bit torn between whether this is four or five stars-worthy, but I think the fact that this was their debut album, it earned all five stars.

I often forgot just how incredible this record is. Beth Gibbons has a voice like no other, and nowhere is that better exemplified than here. Tracks like Roads, Biscuit, Glory Box, It Could Be Sweet, Wandering Star, Mysterons, yeah im just naming the whole fucking album. It is that good. A must hear for all.

5/5 Already an all-time favourite of mine (Thanks Dad.) The best to come out of the Bristol trip-hop bands. It holds this haunting, grimy atmosphere through the beautiful, ethereal vocals floating over the top of the industrial sounding hip hop beats and creepy samples and synths. Top 3 Songs: Numb Glory Box Mysterons

Always loved Portishead's sound. Laid back interesting trip hop sound with melancholic lyrics and Beth Gibbons's voice drawing you in. Haven't listened in full in a long time so thanks for the opportunity.

Enjoyed listening to this for mainly nostalgic reasons. Reminded me of good times in the 90s after leaving university. Coincidentally was listening to the new Beth Gibbons album the day before this came up. Very relaxing and laid back grooves.

Excellent. Atmospheric. Delicate voice.

01) Mysterons - 9,0 02) Sour Times - 10,0 03) Strangers - 9,0 04) It Could Be Sweet - 9,0 05) Wandering Star - 10,0 06) It's a Fire - 9,0 07) Numb - 9,0 08) Roads - 9,0 09) Pedestal - 9,0 10) Biscuit - 9,0 11) Glory Box - 10,0 TOTAL: 9,27 (93/100) Current ranking: 19/371 I knew the singles, but I never heard the rest of the album. And the rest of the album is the reason why this is one of the most praised albums of the nineties. Apart from "Glory Box", which is one of my favorite songs of all time, I would like to single out "Wandering Star" and "Sour Times" as highlights of this excellent album.

Mysterious, cinematic, unsettling, cool, strong, oppresive, delicate, original, light, dark, beautiful, enigmatic, surprising, edgy, sad, fragile, desolate, inventive, hypnotic, absorbing, elegant, uncomfortable, seductive, intimate, unique.

Every song's a beauty.

Another favorite from my time as a music biz hanger-on in the early '90s. Go! Discs goes trendy; I attended the "world premiere" of the associated (and pointless) To Kill A Dead Man at the Prince Charles Cinema, oh so glamorous! One of the first of its kind, still sounds fresh and arresting, don't blame this for the subsequent trip-hop tedium. Made any spotty, nervous student oik feel instantly sophisticated. Great voice, clever samples including the first (?) use of the soon-to-be-ubiquitous Isaac Hayes motif on the fabulous Glory Box. Mysterons, Sour Times, Roads, not a dud here even if some tracks are less instantly memorable Nostalgic 5*

My initial thoughts are, "It's Dummy by Portishead, of course it's an automatic five, are you crazy?" But then I started to think a little (and I haven't pressed play yet). Outside the singles 'Numb', 'Sour Times' and of course 'Glory Box' is anything about the rest of the album memorable at all? Are the good songs that good, that it doesn't even matter about the rest? We shall see... 'Mysterons' is such a good opening song, sets the mood immediately. Not much to add about 'Sour Times', great song. I love the throbbing, pulsating drive of the bass and the trippy backwards snare in this song, 'Strangers' is definitely one to remember. 'It Could Be Sweet' is the first song I'm not a fan of on the album, the beat in particular feels off with the rest of the instrumentation and sampling on the track. It's not bad by any means, but doesn't do it for me. 'Wandering Star' picks things back up with a great beat and bass line and some good turntable work. Nice organy opening, I don't really remember this song at all. Hmm, a bit nondescript this one sadly, and I'm rather cold for 'It's On Fire'. Dark and brooding and what a fucking bass line, 'Numb' is fantastic. The processing on the drums creates a great atmosphere too. This song is like heartbreak and despair and sadness distilled and compressed into a single outpouring of grief. The guitar swells and then the orchestra are just perfect. 'Roads' is a fantastic song, probably my favourite on the album. Another great bass line in 'Pedestal' and trumpet solo! (Sounds like a trumpet to me!) The organ sounds good in 'Biscuit' and some more sub-bass is always good. The scratching and slowed down vocal sample sounds great with the organ over the top. 'Glory Box' is a very good song. Debut album, hugely influential, the best song wasn't even a single. 5 / 5 stars.

liked it. pornographic vibes

Might be a "you had to be there" situation but this got a lot of airplay in my orbit back in the day. Using funky Isaac Hayes samples to get down wasn't new. What was new was using them to get down in the sense of getting depressed, not to get down as in dance your ass off.

Solid album

Fairly good

I hate trip hop - but really like Portishead. Great vocals, non-repetitive beats and an ethereal vibe.

Really enjoyed this album

I vibe with it! Good beats, chill songs. Favorite track: "Wandering Star."

Like someone put 90's hip-hop and alt-rock into a blender. The gloomy mood makes it perfect rainy day music but the record scratches and samples keep the music from becoming too downbeat or melancholy. It’s a cool, druggy vibe. Favorite tracks: “Sour Times” (one of those songs I didn’t even know that I knew until it came on), “It Could Be Sweet” (that bass line!) and “Wandering Star” (love the record scratches and background layers).

This music time warped me to my college days where my best friend was super into Bjork and this band. Nostalgia aside, they're still not for me.

главный вопрос: откуда в трип-хопе ХОП? трип вполне понимаю

Fantastic background music with the occasional ear-catcher track, or at least part. Glory Box also really stands out to me. Not a fan of electronica, but this one is a 3.5/5

Eerie and dreamy and totally cool, but also static, almost posing. It could do with some tunefulness. It’s all moods, with little flow and next to no harmony. Trip-hop is not aging all that well; here, the over-reliance on the same little scratchy sound-effect speaks to a passing (now long past) moment of coolness; these songs are equally transitory, if still cool, which lands them somewhere between triviality and ephemerality. 3

The bells on Sour Times sounds like the Taskmaster TV show. And is also a cool groove! It's A Fire is another groove. Glory Box is a nice closer, though I personally feel this album as a whole is lacking.

I want to like this but there’s not enough variation in tempo throughout the album. I could listen to maybe one of these songs at a time but a whole album is just boring, no matter how well the beats are constructed. 5/10

Like the voice and the music is not my style but not offensive then after 10 minutes my ears got bored and stopped listening as every track sounded the same.

• 5/5 • The exemplar of trip-hop that excels in every component, beginning with the vocals and through to the beats, jazzy elements, fuzzy guitar, and mellow-yet-unsettling mood • A great listen all the way through, with a few fantastic tracks; Sour Times should have been the theme for a Bond film (in the best, Shirley Bassey way)

Another classic, what an incredible vibe this album sets and ending with Glory Box which is such an S tier song, what an album!

Front to back this album is perfect. This was one of my go to records when I was in dating mode and I knew a make out session was coming. Many, many, many sexy times to this record.

Oh my god how have I never heard this. This album is inspiring. From the needle drop, I was 100% invested. The textures build a whole different world and keep your ears satiated throughout. The emotion in every instrument really makes you FEEL something. What a listen. This album has changed me.

Just so effortlessly cool

One of my favourite records of all time. The fusion of hip hop style backing music with the atmospheric/gothic vocals of Beth Gibbons creates such an interesting dynamic to the music. Each time I listen to it, I get something new from it. One of those fully formed debut albums. Wonderful stuff.

Excellent album.

Five

SUCH a FANTASTIC album!!!!

My buddy has a project to buy all of their "Perfect Albums" on vinyl. This was one of their first purchases and I could not agree more. Trip hop is a genre I like more on paper than in practice. After a time I just need this to open up a little, but this album is a major exception. Easily listened to it 3 times yesterday and will likely give it a few more spins this week.

I knew and loved Glory Box before this and always meant to listen to more of the artists but never did. I am really glad I did now. I still think that Glory box is my favorite song of the album but the rest sound great as well. Just a really cool sound overall.

This came up and I audibly said "Yesssssss..." So sad, so sexy. Great album.

We played this one a BUNCH at Camelot Records in 1995-96. It was my senior year and of the music we were allowed to play in-store, that record was among our favorite. Customers and our Manager… not so much.

Neato!

Portishead has to be one of the coolest bands of all time. And this record just oozes chill. It's truly amazing how it captures me.

Oh, un petit quelque chose d'exotique quand même dans Sour Times. J'ai bien aimé. C'était doux et ambiant.

Un autre album du lot d'écoute de China. Elle va m'étriper si je ne donne pas 5 étoiles... Bien mérité. Selon China c'est un des meilleurs albums des années 90.

Wandering Star est magnifique. La ligne de basse vient d'un autre monde. Début de it's a fire on dirait qu'on rentre dans un temple dans Zelda, c'est le fun. La ligne de basse est tunée quelques hertz au-dessus de la tonalité on dirait c'est cool. Glory Box très beau. Il y a une vibe langoureuse sur l'album ça me parle. C'est le genre d'album qui s'écoute bien avec un ressenti 46 degrés

Classique! Je l’avais déjà écouté des dizaines de fois alors c’était facile. L’album a vraiment une capacité à établir une ambiance et à la maintenir toute sa longueur. C’est chaud, sensuel parfois, la tension est vive. La voix de Beth se mêle si parfaitement aux arrangements de Geoff. Sour Things, Glory Box, It’s a fire. Juste des chansons qui résonnent encore 31 ans plus. « Nobody loves me, it’s true… not like you do »

GOATED trip hop classic. Probably my favourite Bristol Sound group.

classic

Great classic album.

10/10

i really liked this album. ethereal and emotional and funky. verrrrry much enjoyed

Love this album

Sounds great. Beth Gibbon's voice embedded in electronic sounds.

Great album! Tight grooves, solid vocals, just an overall enjoyable listen.

Classic album and genre defining. The soft smooth vocals, the wonderful sample usage and all the textures in the songs, ui juist can't really go wrong

How can you not give a genre-defining album five stars?

…mimimi….mimi….mimimi…

So creepy but also conforting

Some albums feel to fly on their own heights and this is one of those.

What an excellent album! By mid 90's my taste in music had accepted that electronic music had flavours and everything with a massive bassy beat was not "euro techno", so I went to town. Portishead was one of the bands that really made an impact and sold the idea that dark and gloomy music didn't have to be fast nor heavy, or rather that heavy started to mean various things when talking about sound. For some reason I find this a bit lenghty release, feel like switching around the last three tracks, but usually let it play through. Really beautiful music.

Classic

Used to own this and lost the CD in a collection of CD's I lost. It was a very important album at the time and was part of a collection of artists that came out of the west of England with the same trip-hop genre. I will always listen to this album, and if i came across the CD again, I would buy it. Its A Fire is FIRE. I would want to own this album just for this song and Glory Box. my rating changed from a 4.5 to a 5 because of these 2 songs alone

Amazing late, late (late) night music.

Atmospheric, haunting and amazing.

Absolute banger to sleep to.

An exquisitely haunting masterpiece. Beth Gibbons voice soothes and mesmerizes through sinewy, sparse electronica. A must listen.

Innovate and emotional

Very funky! Didn’t think I would like this at first but ended up really vibing with it

Oh yeah wow. Another classic. This album is so good and so timeless and a perfect five. I’m so happy at the opportunity to listen to it again. What’s interesting about Dummy and Portishead in general is how singular it is. Usually when you have such a seminal album you get a wave of copy cats, some better some worse. This was never the case here. Trip hop was a limited scene and you didn’t really get a wave of Portishead copy cats. You can’t copy what makes this album special. It feels like the end of the night, the after of the after party. Like broken promises and shattered dreams and lost hope and it’s sooo beautiful. The production mixes hip hop, dance music, cinematic music and an old timey jazz feel. Gibbons’s vocals are beautiful but also beautifully flawed and cracked like they’ve been through all the pains of life. Wabi sabi in a way. Perfect five in any way possible.

A morose record scratches in a rainy, black and white movie with cobwebs drifting in time with the quietly crooned ennui. Dummy is an immortal trip-hop record that combines James Bond soundtrack samples, live instrumentation and programmed beats. Beth Gibbons melancholic voice soars to a keen and sinks to a sensual register, the lyrics are best heard as a melodic articulation, not read as poetry. Every 1990s bohemian girl declared a sadly frustrated sexual autonomy to album closer, and soundtrack staple, Glory Box. But, every single track on Dummy still feels both vintage and futuristic.

Went in with no expectations. Was not expecting trip-hop. At times it sounded like they were making music for a haunted house, at others I actually thought I was listening to a modern Bond film.

your demon stalks you in the night. it stares at you from every angle of this city, across from every derelict bus stop, in hallucinations formed between the specks in your eyes and the popcorn ceiling above your bed. in between moments of brief sexual release by yourself, you feel its hands, perverted and unkind, perched upon your shoulder. its drool is cold upon your neck. something haunts you, and it will not leave you alone, nor will it kill you. it will simply exist, taking up space wherever it sees fit, like some dispassionate feline. for some reason, there has been an understanding of Dummy as potentially sexy or swanky; i could not imagine fucking to this. this isn't lifeless music, for sure, but something is haunted and off-putting about it. the band made this record through taking their soon-to-be-abandoned vinyl samples and sliding down the banister on them, using them as skateboards. as a result, we have a scuffed future, something far from Massive Attack's sobering march into the future or Tricky's vampiric hip hop. it's soul music, emptied of its lust for life and filled with a bitter acceptance of a future that is equal parts uncertain and unfair. even the occasional acid jazz flourishes feel like flashes of light from a malfunctioning neon sign, accidentally switched on by a nightguard watching old rotting properties. the term i saw used in RJ Wheaton's book on Trip Hop for the 33 1/3 Genre series was "black-hearted soul". i disagree -- a "black heart" implies cruelty, evil. Portishead are not evil, they are drained. this is soul-sucked soul.

This has gotta be one of the most innovative albums genre wise, as it seemingly invented it own genre, and still transcended everything that's categorised as 'trip-hop' imo. The vocals are amazing, and have such a range of styles, and fit the haunting yet beautiful mood perfectly. I feel like quite a lot of elements from the instrumentals feel like samples, and are emulating that dusty old sound, from the CD credits, which I think is an amazing sound. The drums especially have such a perfect timbre, with the slight vinyl noise and crunch, and also the unconventional drum parts, like the drum machine on it could be sweet and the seemingly the snare drum with the level off in numb, which works perfectly. Also the organ/Rhodes which make up a surprising amount of the backings are great, and not too in-your-face. Absolutley no downsides with this, I think the only problems with Portishead as a band started to show in the self titled album after this, but nothing here. Favourite songs: all, maybe the its a fire one slightly less but still. Overall around 10/10

I have known and loved this album for a while now. It sets a very specific mood that you can't help but be transfixed by. However, I've always thought that there were some clear highlights and some clear... not highlights. We shall see if this notion holds up. Mysterons is really the perfect introduction here. Immediately you know what to expect. Perfect production, great vocals, and an odd setting. The drums here are perfectly repetitive, and the synth adds a lot to that air of mistery. Lyrically, not sure what it is about. But I sure love to sing along with Beth Gibbons. Great stuff. Sour Times seems to be about not lying to yourself and just... doing it. What you want to. Disregard traditional values and live. And that chorus man. This one is one the most emotional songs in an album filled with them. But really paying attention to the lyrics has made me love it even more. Damn Stranger is the first song that can be described as "unsettling" (something that can be said about a lot of their later material). The samples here are relentless, always drowning and present. It almost feels like a march, since there's always something happening. It is one of the songs that I didn't pay much attention to when revisiting this album, but this time I'm suddently liking it much more. It Could be Sweet has always been one of my favourites. So laid-back, the instrumentals are kept to a minimum, so all the focus is on the vocals, and damn is the delivery amazing. Lyrics wise, it reminds me of Sour Times a bit, especially the idea that you can't run away from your thoughts, or your wishes, and surrendering to them "could be sweet". This song is also an example of something that I feel about the whole album: it is not necessarily sad (although it can be interpreted in that way). To me, it's more beautiful than sad. In Wandering Star the sample is again a bit more unsettling. It also seems to be the outright saddest song in the album, about the state of depression and its feeling of inescapability. And besidesi talking a lot about feeling bad, it also dabbles in being deserving of it, things which often go hand-in-hand. It's a Fire has always been my least favourite track on the album. It seems to be about keeping on keeping on. And while at first it seems hopeful (even the instrumentals), there are clues that it is all a farse, the biggest example being the fact that the song ends with "so breathe on, little sister, like a fool". Numb, despite its title being the one that most aligns with the mood of the record, is the one that fits in the least. The vocal delivery reminds me a bit of something from their next album. Lyrically, it's sad. "This loneliness, it just won't leave me alone". The vocals, however, keep me from fully connecting to it, which is a rarety in Dummy. Roads is the most heartbreaking song here. However, its lyrics are also the most vague and hard to decipher. I think it's about loneliness in such a packed world. A feeling that we all feel and yet don't recognize. Her asking "how can it feel this wrong" though... yeah, great. Pedestal is another one I often forget about. I can't quite make sense of what it is about, but it sounds so cool and distant. The vocals are almost disconnected (non-derogatory). It's hard to miss out on a song that is between two giants (Roads and Glory Box), and sadly I think that may have happened to Biscuit. But damn is it good. That feeling of supposedly being full but still being hungry. Being a "slave of sensation". Yeah. And then we arrive at the big boss. Glory Box. It's the kind of song that, for fans, has become "too famous". But man, it's good. Very good. And so resonant. People seem to think that this is a bit of a feminist anthem, and while I do think that is in part true, I also think it is an admission of fault. All she wants to be is a woman. Despite recognizing that the standards set for what a woman is are ridiculous, she still wants to mett them. And that's true of everyone. We all admit that standards of gender (and plenty other things too) are useless and dumb, but we all still have that urge that forces us to fulfill them. At least that's what I get out of this. Yeah, this record is amazing. It is a defining achievement of any genre that uses samples, and is all but the founding text of the trip-hop genre. And it definitely holds up, as nothing quite like this album has been made since. I did gain a new appreciation for some tracks, and my love for the others only blossomed. It's a classic, and a damn good one at that. Bye

Billie Eilish vibe

Great album

Last song is a masterpiece

There are moments of pure perfection in this album. You can tell every beat, note and grainy crackle has been thought about. Underneath it all are some great tunes, delivered into something which at the time was both familiar but fresh and new.