Portishead - Dummy [180g, Gatefold, 20th Anniversary] (LP) Vinyl

Dummy is the debut studio album by the English band Portishead, released on 22 August 1994 by Go! Beat Records. It won the 1995 Mercury Music Prize and is widely credited with carrying trip hop out of Bristol and into the mainstream. The album was certified triple platinum in the United Kingdom in February 2019, had sold 920,000 copies in the UK as of September 2020, and had sold 3.6 million copies worldwide by 2008.

The Album

Geoff Barrow and Beth Gibbons met on an Enterprise Allowance course in February 1991 and started recording their first ideas in Neneh Cherry's kitchen in London, where Barrow had been hired to work on Cherry's second album. Work moved to Coach House Studios in Bristol, and "It Could Be Sweet" became the first song finished, in 1991. The guitarist Adrian Utley met Barrow during those sessions, heard the track and began trading ideas with the band; Barrow taught him sampling, while Utley introduced unusual sounds such as cimbaloms and theremins. The record leans heavily on hip hop production technique, sampling, scratching and loop making, but none of it was recorded digitally. Portishead cut their own original music to vinyl and then manipulated those records on turntables in order to sample them, distressing the discs by laying them on the studio floor and walking across them, and running sound through a broken amplifier to get the aged, grainy tone that defines the album.

Samples

"Sour Times" draws on Lalo Schifrin's "The Danube Incident" together with a percussion part from Smokey Brooks' "Spin It Jig". "Strangers" samples Weather Report's "Elegant People", "Wandering Star" uses War's "Magic Mountain", "Biscuit" takes from Johnnie Ray's "I'll Never Fall in Love Again", and "Glory Box" is built on Isaac Hayes' "Ike's Rap".

Artwork

The cover is a still image of Beth Gibbons taken from To Kill a Dead Man, the short film the band made themselves and for which their self-composed soundtrack earned them their record contract.

Reception

Dummy met with universal acclaim on release. "Numb" was the first single, issued in June 1994, followed by "Sour Times" in August and then "Glory Box" in September, which reached number 13 on the UK Singles Chart. "Sour Times" was re-released on the back of that success and also reached number 13 in 1995. The album itself reached number two on the UK Albums Chart. It took the 1995 Mercury Music Prize ahead of a shortlist that included PJ Harvey's To Bring You My Love, Oasis' Definitely Maybe and Tricky's Maxinquaye, and was voted the 14th best album of 1994 in the American Pazz and Jop critics' poll. Rolling Stone placed it at number 131 in the 2020 edition of its 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, and the record is included in the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die.

This Pressing

This is the 20th anniversary reissue, released by Go! Beat in 2014 on a single 180g heavyweight black LP in a gatefold sleeve, with a download card included. It carries catalogue number 3797205 and barcode 0602537972050 under Island and Go! Beat labels, is copyright 2014 Go! Discs Limited with the sound recording copyright dated 1994, and plays at 33 1/3 RPM. All tracks were produced by Portishead with Adrian Utley and engineered by Dave McDonald, recorded at State of Art and Coach House Studios in Bristol with additional mixing at Moles Studio in Bath. The lacquers for the 2014 pressing were cut by Jack Adams. The ten tracks are split five to a side.

Tracklist

Side A

1. Mysterons (4:56)
2. Sour Times (4:05)
3. Strangers (3:49)
4. It Could Be Sweet (4:10)
5. Wandering Star (4:46)

Side B

1. Numb (3:43)
2. Roads (4:56)
3. Pedestal (3:30)
4. Biscuit (4:34)
5. Glory Box (4:49)