Magazine: Billboard, October 8, 1994

Section: Artists & Music

LONDON--The obscure West Country town of Portishead is little more than a dot on a very large-scale map of the British Isles, but its namesake, a unique, left-of-center, dance/pophybrid duo, is threatening to make its mark around the world.

The group's album "Dummy" was released here by Go!Beat, the dance arm of Go!Discs, Aug. 22 to a welter of acclaim from all quarters of the press, including dance and rock magazines (Q called it "perhaps the year's most stunning debut album") and daily newspapers such as The Observer and The Times. It had an impressive debut at No. 32 on the U.K. album chart--despite a predictable absence of daytime airplay--and, according to Go!Beat, has sold some 20,000 units in the U.K. so far.

Even though the 1994 Mercury Music Prize took place only a fortnight ago, "Dummy" has become one of the earliest tips for the 1995 contest.

The album is already garnering good press and public response in Europe, where the duo of Geoff Barrow and Beth Gibbons has been on an extensive promotional tour. The set is due to be released by London Records in the U.S. Oct. 18.

The key to Portishead's sound and success thus far has been an ethereal and filmic feel, masterminded by Barrow and including samples from such bands as Weather Report, Isaac Hayes, and War, and prominent use of Fender Rhodes and synthesizer sounds from the vintage hand-controlled theremin. The effect is heightened by the intimate but unsettling lyrics and vocals of Gibbons. Backing the duo throughout the album are Portishead's unofficial third member, engineer Dave MacDonald, as well as music director Adrian Utley and players Clive Deamer, Gary Baldwin, and Tim Bishop.

Barrow, from Weston-Super-Mare (to the west of Bristol), and Gibbons, from the city suburb Keynsham, met in a government-funded musical training program in 1991. Barrow first worked as a tape-op at the local Coach House studio, where "Dummy" was recorded, and Gibbons has sung in local bands for a decade.

The album has invited comparisons with other dance-flavored Bristol-area acts, such as Circa/Virgin's Massive Attack and 4th & Bway/Island's Tricky.

Two singles, "Numb" and "Sour Times," have already been released from the album in Britain, with a third, "Glory Box," due Nov. 7.

Portishead is known not only for its unusual use of film as a promotional medium, but for the duo's growing reputation as remixers, namely for singles by Gabrielle, Depeche Mode, Primal Scream, Paul Weller, and fellow Bristol band Federation. However, Barrow and Gibbons plan to temporarily pull in their remix shingle as they concentrate on their own recording career, with plans for a follow-up album and selected live work.

Early reaction to "Dummy," says band manager Caroline Killoury, "has been incredible." She cites Holland, Belgium, and Sweden as early European supporters. "Everyone's come on board so quickly. Press have been calling us on it, and I think its because it's so fresh, but I don't think any of us expected it to happen so quickly."

Prior to the album's release, Portishead completed a 10-minute monochrome film, "To Kill A Dead Man," that was premiered by Go! Beat during a promotional night in June at the Prince Charles cinema in London's Leicester Square (on a bill with the specially selected 1971 British thriller "Get Carter," starring Michael Caine). The film was then released locally with mainstream release such as "Body Of Evidence" and "Reservoir Dogs," and was featured at several domestic and European film festivals. Go! Discs press officer Tony Cream says plans are afoot for the film to be used in a similar way at colleges in the U.S.

"A lot of interviews I've been doing ask about us being very visually based," says Barrow. "But I never thought of it like multimedia thing. We just thought we'd make a film instead of the normal pop video, then we could take stills from it and use them as artwork for the album, but it meant we could also write a soundtrack for 10 minutes, which we wouldn't otherwise have got a chance to do. I don't like the way so much money is spent on video when there's so many struggling film makers around."

Barrow plays down the cinematic references in his music, but the album holds a particular affinity with the soundtrack work of John Barry. "I like films from the late '60s into the '70s, and the way that [film music writers], if they wanted to create suspense, they didn't have synthesizers--they had an orchestra or band, and would experiment with sound through old equipment. I'm kind of anti-technology. We use a lot of old, mechanical instruments. It's not just soundtracks [that influence me], but all kinds of music from the year dot. The only modern music I can get into is hip-hop. That's a major influence."

The "To Kill A Dead Man" film has given Go! Beat an extra option at the retail level. The HMV store in Barrow's home base of Bristol mounted a window display featuring a dummy sitting on a red cinema seat, watching the film on a continual loop--a visual which captured customers' imagination, says the store's assistant manager, Robert Campkin.

"There was a lot of interest in the display. A lot of customers stopped to look, because it was something out of the ordinary. It proved to be a very successful piece of promotion, and sales of the album increased as a result."

The "Dummy" title also inspired an audacious promotional campaign by Go! on the day of the album's U.K. release when, Cream says, he and the band bought a "team" of mannequins, painted them blue, and planted them in a series of highly visible locations, such as the Eros statue in Piccadilly Circus and Camden Lock in the north of the city.

The gambit was inspired by an episode of the classic British TV scifi series "Dr. Who," in which dummies came too life and terrorized London. But Cream says the real-life experiment had unexpected results. "Some of them were taken away by the police because there was a bomb scare that day in Oxford Street. But we had someone taking photographs of them --quite a lot of them got seen -- and it ran as a story inn the New Musical Express and the Observer. I know at least one person who's got half of one of the dummies in his office."

Radio reaction to "Dummy" has largely been outside daytime rotations, but this is no surprise, says Killoury. "It's very mellow and latenight, not the sort of thing that's going to be playlisted during the day."

Supporters have included veteran broadcaster Bob Harris, who has ben featuring the track "Strangers" from the album on his evening shows on Greater London Radio, the BBC's local London station.

"The reaction has been fantastic, and I love it," says Harris. "It's such an innovative album. The description 'present day urban blues' fits it very well. Soul comes in so many forms--you don't have to be Otis Redding to have soul--and the album's part of an amazing surge of really good music coming out of the U.K. right now, at last." Harris cites the current albums by Massive Attack and Ride as other examples.

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By PAUL SEXTON