Portishead & The Enigmatic Heartache of ”Glory Box” | New British Canon
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Portishead did not want to be pop stars, they didn’t do interviews, rarely wanted to play live, they didn’t play the game. Yet their debut album, Dummy, quickly became one of the best selling albums of 1995, but not everyone understood what the Bristolian combo were trying to achieve. They stood in stark contrast to the contemporaneous Britpop moment, moody, modern and a supremely British take on American Hip Hop. On tracks like "Sour Times" and "Roads," they were beyond merely background music. The contrast between Geoff Barrow’s retrofuturist beats and Beth Gibbons’ conflicted vocals is best shown on the atmospheric heartache of their third single. This is New British Canon and this is the story of “Glory Box.”
#Portishead #TripHop #MusicDocumentary
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00:00 Introduction
01:02 The Origins of Portishead
05:48 The Creation of Dummy
09:52 The Process Behind "Glory Box"
13:55 The Impact of Portishead & Dummy
Soundtrack:
Luar - Citrine ( / luarbeats )
Jesse Gallagher - The Inner Sound
B-Side - Pen Unubis
Luar - Anchor ( / luarbeats )
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awesome video! Would love to see your take on early eels and eels now. Also thanks for free month on skill site, Ive been wanting to learn garage band!
Before 1994 I was strictly Thrash Black and Death Metal but was blindsided by Portishead and Massive Attack and it wasn't welcomed by my comrades at all, fuck them 🖕🏼
Dummy was easily one of the best albums of the 90s.
Of all time, ask me.
90s no brainer.
Of all times - unknowable... but my lifetime and the lifetimes of anyone I know - yeah, probably.
Easily.
Of course. As someone who got sick of it in the 2000s, I've come back to it recently and it is just astoundingly good. All three of their albums are of equal caliber imo, but I'm very into the weirdness of 3rd even though I know it isn't intended to have as broad of an appeal.
Dummy and OK Computer.
i was bullied at school for liking Portishead and Bjork!! Used to have their band names written on my pencil case!! I'm still proud of my 14 year old self... :)
As you should be!
Look around you, we still are that kid. At my 38 years old... Proud of the music I liked and Like.
Good on you. I'd of beaten up your bullies for sure in school. 🏴
Should be for liking bjork. It's terrible.
@@twomindz79 You might just be needing that 'unused wheelchair' Clark, if you keep on like that. Someone will Kyrptonite yo a$$!
My dad gifted my his cd copy of Dummy when I was about 14/15 (I was also just coming out of an emo phase). He said about the album "this one's depressing, you'd like it". I instantly fell in love.
hahah, what a cool dad
Your dad sound cool :)
haaahaa ;D))) great dad
I have also gifted Portihead to my now, 31yr old son. Back when they started. And he is so grateful now. Feels like a win as a dad 😉
Well, I'm trying to get my 17 year old daughter into portishead and massive attack etc, but she's locked into a goth/siouxsie/bauhaus phase and thinking she's so different and edgy she isn't capable of listening to art that doesn't have a goth element. So glad I grew up in era when ppl could just listen to what they liked without feeling they needed to belong to a tribe. I was listening to Bristol music at the same time I was listening to Manchester and Seattle music. Metal, shoegaze, electronic music, IDM etc, I was never limited by a genre and never felt the need to have a tribe
It’s because Beth didn’t give up smoking and didn’t have lessons that makes her one on the greatest voices ever.
smoking was part of the onstage-identity of beth gibbons as form of counter cultural appearance to the perfect pop world.
yes , she is a REAL artist , not put together by the old male handlers in the loan shark " MUSI" ? industry ;D)))
@@veganvocalist4782 Smoking fags makes you a "real artist"? If only it was that simple. That comment alone speaks volumes about how easily kids like you fell for the emperor's new clothes that was the "cool" music of that era.
I’m so impressed that they physically scratched up their own vinyl and then looped it. Who does that?
Yeah. Reminds me a bit of Radiohead trying to get a good reverb sound when they were recording "In Rainbows."
Their solution was to mic up a speaker that was hung on a rope half way down an old stone well shaft. (And it sounds every bit as amazing as it should!)
There's a photo here: radioheadassets.s3.amazonaws.com/deadairspace/images/downthewell.jpg
Some artists go the extra mile...
Think it's a technique public enemy used in their early work. Though pressing up your own vinyl, then scratching it, is a pretty cool extension.
Everyone did back then.
It was when lo-fi was becoming very popular, and now there are effects made to make pristine beats, whether acoustic or digital, sound like a record that’s been used over and over.
Even some having Vynil wobble, scratches, even stuttering repeats, with controls to muffle the tone as much as one wants.
its trying to recreate the sound of sampling old bashed up records
@@jdoedoenet they did that to the entire album or just one song? that's insane. I love them u.u
Portishead - Roads in Roseland NYC from 1997 is one of the best live performances ever recorded
Stunning .... I always tear up, watching that performance.
I agree completely.
You're gatdamn right!
I can play it on my head, and it still hits me like a truck
Fuckin A right!!!
This band helped me cry out the crap during some dark times.
and celebrate just as many. The roseland set is literally music to murder by.
I was so lucky to be a teen at that time.
Because:🚬🎤
"Blackness of darkness forever"
🙏🏻 I'm glad to you! btw✌🏻
the press thought "Glory Box" was about wanting traditional marriage? had they heard the song? it is obviously about a woman who is tired of faking "traditional" relationships and wants someone who will appreciate her and will work for the relationship. She says right in the refrain, "Give me a reason to love you."
I love this song for that, too. too much Pop music is about whining about your crappy relationship and just accepting abuse because of "love". its nice to hear a song where someone says, "fuck this. It's YOUR turn to work for it."
Right? I don’t know how you can think that except if you only hear “i just want to be a woman” and nothing else and then put your trad twist on it...
Also the original video for this is set in the 50s and shows a bunch of male and female characters but is hardly traditional for the 50s or the 90s or even now really, with the characters crossdressed with no explanation. I mean, it’s not like these people are stripping or having sex, but they went in that direction of putting on gender persona presumably for some reason. (Video keeps getting pulled down of TH-cam and Vimeo but can be found on Dailymotion I believe)
That feeling of, "I know that beat, how did they get it to go on like that?" is such a magical thing for those who love the art of sampling. And then Portishead, on top of their game, sampled themselves. LOVE IT.
Roads was always my favourite Portishead song. The opening makes me shiver every time.
For years I couldn't stop listening to Roads on repeat. Still right up there with my favourite songs
Amen to that! Gibbons' tortured vocals cut so deep. I love it.
Most heartbreaking.
That song was sooooo made for putting in shagging scenes in movies.
Always makes me cry. Sat in the car and sobbed last week.
This album has a special place in my life. When I was in the US Navy, 94-98....i had recently just reported to my boat, and was qualifying and îlearning about the Los Angeles class fast attack submarine while underway. 24 hours on, 6 off is pretty much what you have to do when youre a newbie on board. Needless to say, when I retired to sleep, I slept. And Dummy is what lulled me to sleep. I shared my rack with a fully armed Mark24 torpedo. I hugged it when the really sad songs came on. I think Im in the unique position to say that Portishead's Dummy sounds amazing at 700 ft underwater. I love the entire album. Its a masterpiece.
Portishead blew my mind when I discovered them (and trip hop in general). I had never heard anything like it.
Along with Massive Attack , Portishead delivered the best music of the 90's. I just picked up Dummy on a vinyl reissue & it sounds Massive !
It was certainly a good time for popular music. These days, things have got so fractured I have no idea where to start looking for the good stuff!
Don't forget Tricky!
@@michaelotis223 I like that Nearly God with Poems on it ! Terry Hall as guest. Maxinquaye is pretty epic as well.
@@davidellis5141 indeed, Bristol was arguably the best forward thinking music hub of the 90s
Can agree. Though the 90s had so much great music, “the best” is both a competitive and a luxury concept. I rarely think about it that way and just feel grateful that there’s the old faves to enjoy, and I even find the things I missed to this day. The reissues and remasters can be great also!
"Dinner Parties and Fornication" sounds like a cool album name
Pulp-esque. The title track would have an amazingly ironic singalong chorus
Sounds like a good night in/out (er, in-out... in-out!) to me! 🤣🤣
Ideal sexytime music.
Or an excellent weekend in the suburbs?
Dummy is one of the greatest and one of the most meaningful albums of all time... simple as that.
This channel has consistently great taste in subject matter. I always learn something, despite being a fan of just about every band featured.
That's a Fact !
So true. They drop a video, I tune in period.
It's like he's been going through my record collection and picking random LP's to chat about. Fantastic channel!
It was Portishead that made the members of Radiohead realize that if they carried on with the style, aesthetic and reckless juvenile antics of Pablo Honey, they would be hated and then forgotten about. Portishead taught them to say "No" to media fanfare and yes to constant experimentation in their music. We owe Portishead more than we will ever know.
How?
that sounds really cool, however, what is the source?
@@destroytheangels Ed O'Brien said as much when talking to Adam Buxton on the AB podcast!
They aren’t underrated, they are BRILLIANT and probably the best thing to survive the 90’s
Agreed
Agreed but a lot of great things survived the 90s
Except for me
So many people didn’t get their music and probably still don’t. It was deliberate, raw, unique, bleak, cinematic brilliance.
That's why Third was so necessary. Whatever else about it, it's an uncompromising statement of what Portishead has always intended to be.
You got it tho. Is like they made it just for you. Your a stone cold genius.
Can Neneh Cherry finally get some love for her role advancing the genres of Hip-Hop, Trip-Hop, and Electronic. It strikes me that she’s at the nexus of all the new directions taken in the late 80s and early 90s.
Homebrew is such an underrated album, Aphex Twin sampled a tune from it for Cow Cud Is A Twin.
She had good teachers from her time as a backing singer for The Slits
@@danthebikeguy447 also her dad
@@PhilippeLarcher The whole family is filled to the brim with musical talent.
Trip-Hop's comeback is long overdue.
The latest trip hop type of song I heard was in that iPhone ad a while back. It was called Nothing Burns Like The Cold. I forgot the artist
Check out Thievery Corporation, I particularly love their albums Temple Of I & I, and The Mirror Conspiracy
trip-hop's revival in the post-trap era, given all we know now, is gonna be incredible.
@@Unsilence409 where is the revival :(
@@ashley09691 I don't know. go poke Trip Hop with a stick and tell it to do something. it'll happen soon enough
I saw Portishead live when they toured their second album and it was genuinely one of the loudest concerts I've ever been to. Amazing show, amazing band. I'm still haunted by the performance of Roads that night.
Yes! I saw that show in Montréal. Easily the best show I have ever seen.
Well made. Portishead are timeless. I must have listened to Dummy front to back at least a hundred times.
Portishead may never be an active band releasing multiple albums but whenever they do it often feels magical and totally unique, I can never forget just how amazing it was just listening to Dummy for the first time and listening to instrumentals for songs like “Biscuit”, “Mourning star”, “Sour time”, “Glory box” and “It’s a fire” as well as Beth’s mysterious and out-of-this-world vocals she had that really made their songs feel timeless where even listening to the album again still feels magical and something I could just play endlessly.
The study and love poured into every video on this channel is such a gift to music.
Seeing things again through the eyes of Trash Theory feels like unlocking an old attic where all your favourite things were put away for later when you need them more.
Portishead, Gibons, Barrow and Utley, gets you to a uniquely emotional place that no other band, not one single other band, has ever managed to do. They actually defined their own mood.
Its remarkable really
Must admit I always assumed Tricky was just sampling Portishead because they were mates (or visa versa). Didn’t know they were both sampling the same original source.
right? maxinquaye is one of my favorite albums but always thought tricky's one was an homage to portishead. it it's true, that's kind of a dick move to listen to a demo without an official release and make your version of the same thing. tricky's did come out 6 months after dummy though.
There's nothing like portishead. They're so unique and Beth Gibbons is a DIAMOND with platinum voice. Their songs keep amazing me nowadays just as when I first listened to them. Roads make me cry, Biscuit is my smoke-a-blunt song and Glory Box is a masterpiece above all. And all of them are jewels. I wish I could meet Beth one day and tell her she's a legend to me and her voice has been a soundtrack of my moods for more than half of my life 🖤
One can agree more or less with your opinions. It's ok, music is a highly subjective matter. But what no one can deny is that you are exceptionally good at telling things, you are precise and clear to communicate these complex and subtle subjects. I love your channel, congrats and greetings from Argentina
This guy from England agrees totally. This is very much my “cup of tea” would also recommend his videos about Dave’s “Black” and MIA’s “ Paper Planes” to name but a few.
This is a song that came to me some 7 years after releasing
I thought it utterly magical
And a complete love affair began
I have continued to listen to it every day for the past two decades
Thanks for the retrospective
❤
The Roseland Live show???🤦🏾♂️🤦🏾♂️ best live show I’ve ever heard!! 😩😩😩😢😢😢
Portishead: Glory box represents the hope and heartache of '90s Britain, the more thoughtful/soulful "big brother" to the hard and fast Brit pop phenomena. Each of their albums capture perfectly the essence of the times..looking backwards to look forward..certainly a soundtrack to my younger years. Underated maybe..but much loved and cherished by all who lived through that decade.
I was in college when "Dummy" came out. I was feeling it all over. Even to this day, when I'm listening to my iPod on shuffle, and suddenly "Strangers" drops, the whole world stops and I step into this whole other realm for the next 4 minutes.
This band ( and dummy) was banned in south Africa. I rushed out to get my own copy ,once unbanned here,smoked a blunt and this band is the reason why I love music so much. These guys are musical gods!
Dummy is the album I was so crazy looking around almost every record store around Manila in the 2000s.
I became obsessed with Portishead in high school and I still love them now at 30 years old... Such great memories of great times...
I discovered the DUMMY album in Albany, NY in 1995, at Lulu Cafe on Lark St. The group of lesbians who worked and socialized at the cafe/restaurant/gallery played the album obsessively, for months. Everyone was happy to listen. This album became a kind of soundtrack for this time period. We had so many great times to this album. DUMMY is an absolutely perfect album, and this track is its shining gem. Thanks for this video.
It always amazes me how people of my ages don't know who these are this was one of the tracks/groups that was the sound track to my teens.
I saw them live in Minneapolis in 1995 at the Guthrie Theatre and it was one of the best sounding shows I have ever seen. Easily still in my top 10 favorite shows of all time. Fun fact: they gave out faux Ray-ban style sunglasses with the Portishead logo printed in white on the sides and I still have this pair today!
I liked the Let It Be record store. A guy named Ryan ran it. Super cool place.
@@davidellis5141 Went there many times and knew Ryan. He had great in stores with artists and met The Church and Robyn Hitchock there.
@@mcdarwin Cool ! I marketed Starfish in 1988 & am looking forward to a reissue this summer. Sold Ryan imports in the 90's and always got in any Prince release !
@@davidellis5141 At that very in store I had the band sign my Starfish cd along with Hologram of Baal cd (the release at the time). I even have The Sum of the Parts album promo release for Starfish which featured acoustic versions recorded in Minneapolis.
@@mcdarwin Those tracks are on the reissue. 40 years for The Church is remarkable. Cool.
One of the best albums ever made, by one of the best bands ever. Their ability to sample & keep the "soul" of the samples - then add it to it, is what's always set them apart
This band has influenced so much of my life. It seems to be every huge moment in my life has had a Portishead track as the soundtrack.
Their output has been small but its never felt forced or unauthentic and it manages to capture much more than just the time it was made. Their music feels like individual people telling you their story at the same time and it just some how connects pefectly with one another.
When I eventually got to see them live and hear their music loud and in its rawest form, it felt like they was playing just to me. I don't know how a gig with 10,000 people can feel intimate but they did it.
To me every song is perfect. Every sound, note and lyric was destined to be part of those songs in the exact combination they put them together in.
They're the greatest band to ever do it.
It took me awhile to realize that Geoff Barrow is my favorite artist. Portishead, Beak, albums he's produced, etc., he's just an amazing talent.
I think the music to "Annihilation' is stunning too.
Portishead and Cocteau Twins are the sound of my soul. Thank you for the Dokumentary and the background. It still touches my heart.
The first time i heard Portishead i was 11 and it was the song Strangers, a dear friend e-mailed to me and it became a before and after for me when it comes to music, opened my mind to a completely different world, i just couldn't believe what i was hearing, so different, beautiful, haunting and mesmerizing! The whole album is a masterpiece but particularly Strangers gets me high on their sound with such ease!
never clicked so fast , he rlly knew i was going thru a portishead phase😒😒
I was just thinking the same thing. Haha.
Same stuff, and well I see we like the same great artists...
Rap in Heaven DOOM🙏🏾🕊️✌🏻
Another great episode. The music of Portishead is so perfectly imperfect, haunting and sobering that it will be eternal. Thank you again for this great piece.
A year and a half or so ago, I came into the studio to host an afternoon shift at our public radio station, WXPR, and the station manager asked if I might squeeze in a half-hour live performance by and interview with an Americana duo that was in town for a show. That sounded fine with me -- not hard to drop a couple sets from the playlist. Now I always have a featured album/cd that I play a cut off to start each hour, so with the visiting musicians packing up in the studio after a great set that started on the half, I turned back to the desk and announced, "And now for the next cut off today's featured disk, Dummy by Portishead." When I muted the mike, the singer/guitar player had a bit of a shocked look, and said, "Wow, I love Dummy ... that album got me through some tough times when I was younger." He couldn't believe that I was playing it on the radio in northern Wisconsin some 25 years later. Independent community radio -- gotta love it.
Every one of their tunes are imprinted in my soul. Stupendous mini doc with excellent musical references. And no ads till the end! *Bows*
Their cover of ABBA'S song S.O.S is so unbelievably beautiful and haunting they made it their own.
They recorded 3 albums, all masterpieces
I'd say not. The second album was half great. The third one was decent but not memorable.
@@ThreadBomb Songs like Magic Doors made Portishead repeat themselves a little bit, but i am fine with that. If the album with The Rip and Machine gun is not memorable for you, that i don't even know what will. I think 2nd album is more meaningful, but sticks too much to the same tone. Dummy is wonderful, no doubt, but i don't like it's romantic themes of woman's fragility.
I’ve had this album it came out. A hidden gem. Blew my mind this album.
That Portishead sound, when I first heard it, sent shivers down my spine and made all of the hairs on my arms stand at attention. My ears were in awe and my mind was blown. A similar experience was had very recently when I heard La Jungle for the first time. Absolute Audio Extacy
I love Portishead. All their albums are masterpieces from start to finish
Portishead ‘s music for me is an emotion , a memory , even the first time I heard it. Gives me the chills. There creativity with sound is brilliant!! Even wrong sounds can be worked into. Some of my fav.
We love PORTISHEAD. Yes we do!! We love PORTISHEAD. How 'bout YOU!?!
This is what I needed. God, I love them. And they're as good live as they are on disc.
How did I never notice Glory Box and Hell Is Around The Corner share that Isaac Hayes sample? I feel like a Dummy! lol
I’ve got about half a dozen tracks in my collection which use this sample. Glory Box is the best though IMO.
Dunno. But Hell is Around The Corner is a much better song. Portishead could easily be the better musicians but Tricky is the more interesting. Controversial opinion of course.
@@rbb2984 I agree, Hell is Around The Corner is just dripping with atmosphere and sends shivers down my spine every time I hear it. Glory Box is great but like most Portishead I find it a bit cold.
@@rbb2984 I totally disagree, musically Hell is Around The Corner is pretty much the loop, Tricky over the top without the emotion of Gibbons and that's it, and he just copied them without the instrumentation.
I know, i feel the same...
a classy and timeless masterpiece
Thank you so much for making this, mid nineties was a massively influential time and I think British music at this time is so rich and varied its still keeps giving all these years later.
Simply put, one of the most influential and underrated bands of all time.
I am literally transported to 1994 when I hear Glory Box! Never knew that sample was Isaac Hayes. Great video
Congratulations for this episode and this channel in general!!Portishead are in a league of their own in their mix of influences, mainly in the way they can create this atmospheres with such fresh choice of sounds. Dummy,in my opinion, is one of the best albums ever made, one of those albums which definitely change lifes. It gives you oxygen to dive in yourself.
'Aside from a few collaborations Gibbons isnt saying'
Her work with the Polish National Orchestra and the legend Krzysztof Penderecki is not merely a collab to passover.
It is utterly majestic. Aside from that, another superb video sir.
Was not aware of that! But Penderecki was only the conductor. The composer was Gorecki.
@@ThreadBomb I know, I never said otherwise. She worked with the Polish Orchestra and Pendernecki. Obviously didnt work WITH Gorecki.
Lovely essay on this timeless album, it still hits me like it did over 20 year ago, even though I was in a completely different time of my life and head space. I reckon it will still be doing the same in another 20 years. Great video, a real treat during some especially sour times.... (couldn't help myself)
Yes!!! So excited to see Portishead! One of my favorite bands! I still remember clearly the first time I heard them. I must of been 15, 16 maybe. Their music is deeply rooted in my life, like memories and photographs. I feel lucky that I got so into trip hop during my teenage years.
This is your peak content. I had a tear in my eye at one point. This band was with me, along Lamb and Beirut (4ad) my whole life. Thanx man.
Dummy is still as joyous & inspiring to me today as it was back in '94. Thanks for this great look back TT.
Dummy is still to this day, one of my very favorite albums.
I was exposed to that album in a small town in the Great Plains (American Midwest) wherein none of the contemporaneous Britpop scene or subsequent triphop noodlings ever even made an appearance. So for many of us, "Dummy" was ALWAYS a wholly unique, stand-alone classic.
Portishead are brilliant. Still light years ahead of anything.Thanks for all this info!
Dummy has seldom been out of my regular music rotation since the late 90s.
It's one of the best albums of all time in my opinion.
Fave track is probably Biscuit. So much atmosphere!
"I'm so tired of playing.. playing with this bow and arrow."
ah ... now I get it, after 20 years
One of the best albums I'll listen to start to finish
I love Portishead
Loved that CD. Burned several mix CDs with Glory Box, usually as the finale. Later moved on to iTunes playlists, and Glory Box made it into several of those. I have now have one of those mixes on a USB stick in my car. I remember having mind blown when I learned they had recorded music to vinyl and sampled it to make the songs, now hearing they would abuse the record to give it that scratchy effect still boggles me. Amazing record, well worthy of another excellent Trash Theory video.
I had to pause this to listen to dummy on vinyl. Great stuff. Another brilliant video 👍🏻
Portishead don't get no where near the amount of credit they deserve. Still love them
That live album tho... it still slaps
Especially watching it while on shrooms....
Thank you for doing an episode on Portishead. Dummy os one of my favourite albums and I have always found their reluctance to play the celebrity game. Thank you, thank you , thank you.
I still listen to the dummy album almost weekly. This was pivotal music for me in my teens.
I got a little bit excited when you mentioned Candie Payne. Massively underrated. Then again so are Portishead imo
Was recently talking to a coworker about music and asked if ever heard of portishead, she didn't, so gave the cd to listen to and liked it. Amazing all these years later and doesn't lose its appeal, vibe. I bet if radio played it now,,kids would be like that's hot, who's that.
Listen during my skooltime.. cassette n now i owed a vinyl!!! Its a must have item!!!!!
I was just listening to Sour Times yesterday. I loved Dummy. Now, I need to get it on vinyl.
Portishead has been one of my favorite bands for nearly 25 years. I appreciate all the work that went into creating this video. Thank you!
I Fucking Love Portishead's Music!!
20+ years later and I'm still vibing out to it!
Mowax, Cup of tea, Ultimate dilemma, Ninja tunes, etc, the "trip hop" era produced so many masterpieces and was an extremely sensitive and clever genre for UK music. Almost all of it has aged amazingly well. Portishead are vey attached to that sound, but somehow seperate also.
good taste, cheers :)
My all time favourite band .. unique and untouched by any one in my opinion.
i enjoyed Sneaker Pimps...
they had the atmosphere of Portishead & had that one big song, 6 Underground, & i listen to "Becoming X", the album it comes from, from time to time...i still enjoy it
Post Modern Sleaze
I think I'm the only person that prefers Splinter and Bloodsport
I was living in Bristol in the 90s and knew Adrian. Late December '93 a group of us, including Adrian, had rented a cottage in Devon to see in the New Year. Adrian had brought along a tape of some stuff that he'd been working on with Geoff and Beth, really excited about this unique sound they were trying to develop. This tape featured the as-yet unfinished demos of several of the tracks that would eventually appear on Dummy. So that was the first time that I heard it, in its nascent development form, around six months before they actually cut the album. True story.
You're quite good at cultivating what you harvest. This was time well spent like the others.
Portishead at Roseland NYC is one of my very favourite albums. I don't know who composed the orchestration, but it sounds like it was always meant to be there.
Glory Box is one of my favorite songs...it was cool to see a breakdown of how it came to be, well done!
Dummy is 30 years old and it sounds like it could've come out yesterday. It was the 1 CD that never left the CD changer.
There is so much to Portishead. The more you listen to tracks the more you hear and pick out.
Some of the samples are so weird but so great.
And she may claim she is not a singer, but she so much is.
'Glory Box' is one of the best songs ever constructed by human minds.
An excellent study of the UK music scene from the 1990s. Well done.
We really should mention that Beth Gibbons sang the soprano part of Gorecki's 3rd Symphony along with the Polish National Orchestra conducted by the composer Krzystof Penderecki. The album was released just in 2019. I thought that was incredibly gutsy for someone who says (in this documentary) that she's not a good singer.
Thank you!
Loving hearing where some of these samples & influences are from. Such an original, powerful, and enigmatic album. Wandering Star was the one that most spoke to me.
i adore their self titled, i feel unstoppable when i listen to it