The day after Portishead's stateside return show at New York's Roseland Ballroom on July 24, the press- shy Portishead held a media conference at the Hilton Hotel to talk about their upcoming eponymous second album, among other things. A full- scale publicity event seemed a touch pompous for a band that is adamant about remaining faceless and letting their music speak for itself (the gist of the entire session), but the motive behind the elaborate affair was to kill as many journalism birds as they could with a couple of quotable stones.
The only news to come out of the event was that Portishead plans to film some videos once they return to their native Bristol, England, and follow that with a brief press and promotion tour. A world tour should kick off by the end of the year.
Surprisingly, vocalist Beth Gibbons was absent from the conference, due to being "really uncomfortable doing press," which left DJ Geoff Barrow, keyboardist Adrian Utley, and sound engineer Dave McDonald to field the questions. Rumor has it that she had a pretty rough night at the after- show party at Spy Bar. Though inexperienced, Barrow carried himself like a veteran, retaliating to unwanted questions (or those he thought to absurd to answer) with musician cliches.
Barrow said of Portishead's new album: "The reason it took so long to make was because, unlike Dummy, we created all the samples we used. When you start collecting samples, you start with a big stack of records. We had to first create that stack before we could start recording. I also went through a phase where I kind of lost it for about 13 months. I confined myself with all these rules about what we should and shouldn't do. I didn't want to use any of the elements from Dummy on the new one."
Barrow soon realized that adhering to his rules meant creating something that wasn't Portishead, so he started fresh. The result is an album that shows progression while keeping with Portishead's distinctive spy-movie orchestrations. The album is due Sept. 30 on London Records.
-Joe D'Angelo