Dummy

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<b>100 Best Albums</b> Few debuts have arrived as distinct and fully formed as Portishead’s 1994 debut, <i>Dummy</i>. Running at just under 50 minute, the album’s 11 tracks are compact yet imaginatively spaciou, a downtempo template for the eerie and disquieting sound that would go on to become known as trip-hop. Released amid the macho Britpop posturing of Oasis and Blur, <i>Dummy</i> lurched like something out of the depth. Named after a 1970s British TV drama about a deaf woman who becomes a prostitute, the record is replete with turntable scratche, shuddering drum, and scrapes of fragmented guitar, all of it anchored by vocalist Beth Gibbons’ crystalline falsetto that typically sings not of love or joy, but of “the blackne, the darkne, forever” in “Wandering Star.” When the members of Portishead first met in 1991, there were few hints as to the type of music they’d go on to make. Comprised of the 26-year-old West Country singer Gibbon, a ponytailed 19-year-old hip-hop fanatic named Geoff Barrow, and 34-year-old jazz session guitarist Adrian Utley, the trio came together at the height of the British acid rave scene to make tracks squarely aimed at the anxiety spiral of a comedown. .

via Apple Music

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