DUMMY
(Go! Beat, 1994)
The old proverb “mighty oaks from little acorns grow” was never truer than when Beth Gibbons and Geoff Barrow met on an Enterprise Allowance scheme in Bristol in 1991. Tapes were exchanged in their tea break and a new band soon emerged. Portishead would inhabit, which celebrates 30 years this year. With multi-instrumentalist Adrian Utley soon on board, they changed the way records were made going forwards, inspiring the warm crackle of the needle drop on a thousand intelligent hip-hop tracks, and opening the floodgates to a deluge of ersatz downtempo imitators (we’ll not blame them for the latter).
