Portishead 'Dummy' - has it aged well?
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hamarplazt
100% No Soul Guaranteed
Well, I never claimed Portishead was bad, just that they have been very influencial, direct or indirect, on a lot of things that I don't like.bassnation said:
I was allways a bit ambivalent towards trip hop. Probably most of all beacuse it got so much attention without being half as interesting as all the rave stuff I loved, which either got no attention at all, or was ridiculed by critics falling over themselves to tell everybody how new and exciting trip hop was.
Tricky was good. I only got 'Pre-millenium Tension' a couple of years ago, but I really like it. Never got into Massive Attack, too much soul for my taste. Earthlings 'Radar', on the other hand, is the great lost trip hop album.
jenks
thread death
i think dummy probably suffered from being used in so many Channel 4 documentaries - tracks getting wheeled out to signify anything vaguely scary or otherworldly.
i started playing their music again about a year ago after one of their tracks came up on a random shuffle on the ipod. dummy, of course, is the blueprint for their sound but like other posters i think the apotheosis is the live album complete with orchestra and some of gibbons' finest vocals.
the solo work she did - ramblin man - ended up being far too tasteful for my ears - listenable but somehow not very filling. (also she looked like mark fowler's scottish girlfriend)
that earthling album still remains a firm favourite and whilst trip hop soon became tarnished as agenre as the bandwagon rolled out of bristol it is interesting to note that the stuff that is still worth listening to - blue lines, maxinquaye, einstein, dummy is all from the original gang - no-one is asking if morcheeba, sneaker pimps or any of those other chancers records still stand up to scrutiny.
i started playing their music again about a year ago after one of their tracks came up on a random shuffle on the ipod. dummy, of course, is the blueprint for their sound but like other posters i think the apotheosis is the live album complete with orchestra and some of gibbons' finest vocals.
the solo work she did - ramblin man - ended up being far too tasteful for my ears - listenable but somehow not very filling. (also she looked like mark fowler's scottish girlfriend)
that earthling album still remains a firm favourite and whilst trip hop soon became tarnished as agenre as the bandwagon rolled out of bristol it is interesting to note that the stuff that is still worth listening to - blue lines, maxinquaye, einstein, dummy is all from the original gang - no-one is asking if morcheeba, sneaker pimps or any of those other chancers records still stand up to scrutiny.
A big problem with a lot of trip-hop was just that it was noodly stoner music and it went on for far too long; I pulled out the old Ninja Tune compilation 'Flexistentialism' the other night and there are way way way too many tunes that only have enough interesting elements for about 3 or 4 minutes dragging on for like 7-8 minutes.
Stoners.
Stoners.
bassnation
the abyss
jenks said:
sneaker pimps "spin spin sugar" is ok though - esp. the van helden remix - apparently produced after he'd visited a jungle night in london and wanted to incorporate elements of the sound in a house tune. it was rinsed pretty heavily by the original speed garage djs iirc.
but morcheeba - ugh. my wife still likes their stuff so its something i still suffer on a regular basis!
SIZZLE said:
funny that you mention that - i've begun to really enjoy bob again.
but yeah contexts - i had a mate who's dad was a doctor and they were a funny restrained family and his mum and dad would play bob marley at dinner to try and be down with the kids . they managed to put me off the bob dylan and the beatles pretty much permanently thru their constant attempts at musical schooling.
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SIZZLE said:
Haha, it's hilarious that you say that. I hated Bob Marley for years because of that...
Anyway, the Portishead albums are great, even in retrospect-- I gotta say Live is always the one I found myself listening to the most, honestly-- but it's true that so much "trip hop" was utter crap. I do like Massive Attack and Tricky quite a bit at various points throughout their careers, but overall I'd say trip hop as a whole was the "safe" genre that people who didn't like electronic music (especially rock critics) could namecheck to feel like they did so that they didn't feel completely irrelevant.
dHarry said:
Yeah, Geoff's obsessive production was part of the appeal for me. That guy was intense. I was quite friendly with Adrian Utley for a while, but one time I found myself stood next to Geoff at a bar I was too freaked to speak to him. The guy radiates...something (in my mind perhaps). I'm with the 'second album is best' crew - 'Portishead' is dangerously heavy, and much more homogonised than the first, without any of that 'prettyness'. But they're both great records. I rarely play them now, but wouldn't ever sell them.
bassnation said:
i think the phluide "creeping vine" version on the flip is superior to the van helden remix
and for a uk garage take, i think the 187 lockdown version is better than van helden's version
can't quite figure out why van helden got so much acclaim for this, frankly
and of course the sneaker pimps original is the best one of all!!!
Haha, I was listening to this at the gym today. I feel like such a yuppie listening to trendy obscure shit on my digital music player while working out. Oh wait, maybe because I am...mms said:
Anyway, yeah, it's a great collection of tracks he's put out on EPs. It's got all the hallmarks of 60s and 70s trippy shit.. reversed bits and pieces and strange harp sounds and cool bass (guitar) lines and his hazed out vocals.. Sorta the meeting point between shoegaze and trip-hop, yet despite how that might sound it's actually good.
Also great that the tracks are short.
The album on Stones Throw is a collection of previously released EPs. I first heard of him via a remix he did for Four Tet, which was really good. From memory Four Tet also released Koushik's first EP, 'Battle Rhymes for Battle Times'. Haha... I love the fact he sings that line in a muffled blur that doesn't sound at all tough.
bassnation
the abyss
dominic said:
yeah, i like the original too - but haven't heard the other remixes. the other avh remix that came out the same time was genaside ii narra mine - a song which is hard to improve imo but the mixes weren't too bad. curiously there was also a wu tang remix released too - which didn't quite work. i love the idea of rza listening to narra mine and all that stuff.
For the record, I have to confess to being quite a fan of what I guess all got lumped together as "trip-hop". Even at the time I thought of a lot of eg. Ninja Tune as acid jazz with a new name from the press, but some of that early Mo'Wax and whatever really blew me away.
Autechre's remix of Palmskin Productions.. like 'Incunabula' goes hip-hop
UNKLE well before the first album.. funny to see Tim Goldsworthy has resurfaced as "the other one" again, this time in the DFA.
DJ Shadow well before his first album..
The occasional Krush tune rose out of the mire, eg. 'Kemuri'...
Trevor Jackson's meagre output as Skull was pretty ace. A bit fucken ornery, but I presume those who are bemoaning trip-hop being too "cafe" would find that a plus. I used to always look out for his name on production credits etc. and was so confused when that Playgroup stuff started surfacing.
What about Skylab's first album? In my mind that holds a fond place with 'UFOrb', where the Orb did a whole synthy techno-influenced take on ambient music while Skylab came at it from the grubby lo-fi hip-hop angle. "I put a seashell to my ear and it all comes back..."
Autechre's remix of Palmskin Productions.. like 'Incunabula' goes hip-hop
UNKLE well before the first album.. funny to see Tim Goldsworthy has resurfaced as "the other one" again, this time in the DFA.
DJ Shadow well before his first album..
The occasional Krush tune rose out of the mire, eg. 'Kemuri'...
Trevor Jackson's meagre output as Skull was pretty ace. A bit fucken ornery, but I presume those who are bemoaning trip-hop being too "cafe" would find that a plus. I used to always look out for his name on production credits etc. and was so confused when that Playgroup stuff started surfacing.
What about Skylab's first album? In my mind that holds a fond place with 'UFOrb', where the Orb did a whole synthy techno-influenced take on ambient music while Skylab came at it from the grubby lo-fi hip-hop angle. "I put a seashell to my ear and it all comes back..."
michael said:
trevor jackson was the underdog wasn't he - he had a hip hop group as well forget what it was called - his mix of massive attacks 'wandering ' with nicolette is skill.
the thing about mo wax is they didn't really have a roster really - most of it was cherrypicked from other labels or people would come in and do one off mixes etc - a truly boutique label - maybe only the excellently strange palmskin productions and unkle were the two mainstays, perhaps krush.
those were funny times, massive dynamics between mo wax-techno/us rza, premier etc hip hop/metalheadz which were pretty amazing. That overmoneyed monkey that ran mo wax was quite a celebrity, more like a pop star, interviewed 100 x more than any of his artists.
Sorry, I wasn't trying to say The Orb were trip-hop, just drawing a point of comparison between two roughly contemporary releases I used to thrash. Both of them I see as morphed ambient music, mashed up with different more contemporary stuff...jenks said:
I do remember at the time seeing in various mags 'Seashell' described as the first trip-hop release or something. I definitely think Howie B was right in the middle of what got called trip-hop - his label Pussyfoot was a weird one. Actually, I tend to think of him as an example of trip-hop getting it wrong.. Outside his part in the early Skylab stuff I don't remember him doing much I liked.
To tie a few things together, I was recording my copy of UNKLE's The Time Has Come remixes into the PC. Huge mash-up of Sun Ra samples, essentially... great example of how these things could be at least fairly wide-reaching. The UNKLE mix is a huge sprawling thing which goes into a massive acid wig-out by the end. Then you've got a Portishead mix that's really intense (simple but damn apt description used upthread), all harsh tremolo guitar and loud theremin. Howie B has a little Glass-like synth arpeggio plus muddy hip-hop beats and a sorta Silver Apples type bassline - both bass and beats suddenly go double-speed.. it doesn't sound jungle.. it sounds dumb. Then Plaid (at that time still with The Black Dog) drop in with .. well, decent Black Dog tracks circa 'Spanners', essentially. Big, locked down beats and layers and layers of shiny sinth melodies piling up in interesting ways.
"The time has come ... to go out of your mind"
Think the tune's called 'Sly', just to be a trainspotter... it's pretty great.mms said:
The hip-hop group he produced was called The Brotherhood.. I remember he also released a double album of Underdog productions, but I didn't buy it. Gave it a listen at the time, but would have no idea what it sounded like now, really.