Dummy (album) - WikiHQ

Dummy is the debut studio album by English electronic music band Portishead, released on 22 August 1994 by Go! Beat Records.

The album received critical acclaim and won the 1995 Mercury Music Prize. It is often credited with popularising the trip hop genre, and is frequently cited in lists of the best albums of the 1990s. Dummy was certified triple platinum in the UK in February 2019, Worldwide, the album had sold 3.6 million copies by 2008.

Background

Geoff Barrow and Beth Gibbons met during an Enterprise Allowance course in February 1991. There Adrian Utley met Barrow while they were recording, heard this track and started exchanging ideas on music. Barrow taught Utley sampling while Utley introduced the band to unusual sounds such as cimbaloms and theremins, which led to an "amalgamation of ideas". According to Barrow, "It was like a light-bulb coming on" when Utley joined them, and they realised they could make their own samples not found on other records, and created one of the most distinctive sounds of the decade. The album was not recorded digitally. They sampled music from other records, but they also recorded their own original music, which was then recorded onto vinyl records before manipulating them on record decks to sample. In order to create a vintage sound, Barrow said that they distressed the vinyl records they had recorded by "putting them on the studio floor and walking across them and using them like skateboards", and they also recorded the sound through a broken amplifier.

Singles

The first song released from the album was "Numb". Two further singles were released from the album: "Glory Box", which reached number 13 on the UK Singles Chart; and "Sour Times", which was released before "Glory Box" but re-released after the success of "Glory Box", also reaching number 13 on its re-release in 1995. On 3 December 2008, Universal Music Japan released Dummy and Portishead as limited SHM-CD versions.

The tracks "Roads" and "Strangers" were used in the soundtrack of the film Nadja.

Music

Philip Sherburne assessed the album's style and instrumentation: "Despite its reputation as one of the cornerstones of trip-hop, Bristol trio Portishead’s 1994 debut is much darker—and stranger—than the conventional wisdom might lead you to believe. [...] Geoff Barrow wasn’t much interested in ambient music. [...] Sampling vintage soul and channeling the spirit of old spy movies, he and 37-year-old guitarist Adrian Utley sketched out a skeletal strain of boom-bap where dial-tone buzz and homemade breakbeats swam in an ocean of silence. It was 29-year-old singer Beth Gibbons who was tasked with filling in that emptiness, but despite the warmth of her Billie Holiday-indebted croon her singing is uniformly forlorn, her presence as unsettling as it is intimate."

Artwork

The cover of the album is a still image of vocalist Beth Gibbons taken from To Kill a Dead Man—the short film that the band created—for which the self-composed soundtrack earned the band its record contract.

Critical reception

Upon release, Dummy received universal acclaim from critics. NME reviewer Stephen Dalton summed up the record by writing: "This is, without question, a sublime debut album. But so very, very sad." He observed, "From one angle, its languid slowbeat blues clearly occupy similar terrain to soulmates Massive Attack and all of Bristol hip-hop's extended family. But from another these are avant-garde ambient moonscapes of a ferociously experimental nature." Dalton concluded that "Portishead's post-ambient, timelessly organic blues are probably too left-field, introspective and downright Bristolian to grab short-term glory as some kind of Next Big Thing. But remember what radical departures Blue Lines, Ambient Works and Debut were for their times and make sure you hear this unmissable album."

In Q, Martin Aston lauded Dummy as "perhaps the year's most stunning debut album" and proclaimed that "the singer's frail, wounded-sparrow vocals and Barrow's mastery of jazz-sensitive soul/hip hop grooves and the almost forgotten art of scratching are an enthralling combination". Tim Marsh of Select wrote: "Jumbling up hip hop, blues, jazz, dub and John Barry-esque TV theme tunes with the edgy lyrics and valium vocals of Beth Gibbons, it's lounge music for arty schizos." The poll's supervisor Robert Christgau, however, remained relatively lukewarm, highlighting "Sour Times" and "Wandering Star" while briefly appraising the album overall as "Sade for androids".

Legacy

Retrospective reviews of the album have praised it highly. AllMusic's John Bush wrote: "Portishead's album debut is a brilliant, surprisingly natural synthesis of claustrophobic spy soundtracks, dark breakbeats inspired by frontman Geoff Barrow's love of hip-hop, and a vocalist (Beth Gibbons) in the classic confessional singer/songwriter mold ... Better than any album before it, Dummy merged the pinpoint-precise productions of the dance world with pop hallmarks like great songwriting and excellent vocal performances." Writing for Pitchfork in 2017, Philip Sherburne summarised that "Portishead's 1994 debut is a masterwork of downbeat and desperation. They invented their own kind of virtuosity, one that encompassed musicianship, technology, and aura." In 2024, Paste wrote the Dummy has "aged the most gracefully and remains the most timely" for the "jazzed-out hip-hop" of its era.

Accolades

Dummy won the 1995 Mercury Music Prize, ahead of other shortlisted albums including PJ Harvey's To Bring You My Love, Oasis' Definitely Maybe, and Tricky's Maxinquaye.

Associated Press - Voted as one of the top 10 pop albums of the 1990s.
Melody Maker - ranked number one album of the year.
Mojo (p. 62) – Ranked No. 35 in Mojo's "100 Modern Classics".
Mojo (January 1995, p. 50) – Included in Mojo's "25 Best Albums of 1994".
The New York Times (5 January 1995, p. C15) – Included on Neil Strauss' list of the Top 10 Albums of '94.
NME (8 December 2000, p. 29) – Ranked No. 29 in The NME "Top 30 Heartbreak Albums".
NME (24 December 1994, p. 22) – Ranked No. 6 in NMEs list of the "Top 50 Albums of 1994".
NME (October 2013, p. 59) – Ranked No. 168 in NMEs list of the '500 Greatest Albums of all time'.
Q (December 1999, p. 82) – Included in Q Magazine's "90 Best Albums of the 1990s".
Q (June 2000, p. 66) – Ranked No. 61 in Q's "100 Greatest British Albums".
In 2000 it was voted number 41 in Colin Larkin's All Time Top 1000 Albums.
Rolling Stone (13 May 1999, pp. 79–80) – Included in Rolling Stones "Essential Recordings of the 90's".
In 2003 and 2012, the album was ranked number 419 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time. In their 2020 revised edition of the list, Dummy was placed at number 131.
Spin (September 1999, p. 140) – Ranked No. 42 in Spin Magazine's "90 Greatest Albums of the '90s".
In 2003, Pitchfork ranked the album number 48 in their "Top 100 Albums of the 1990s" list. In their revised 2022 list, Pitchfork named the album #11.
In 2015, Fact placed the album at No. 2 in their "50 Best Trip Hop Albums" list.
The album was also included in the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die.
The Wire named Dummy its 1994 record of the year.
The album is the subject of a title in Continuum's 33 1/3 series of books, published in October 2011.
Apple Music – Ranked No. 67 in "Apple Music 100 Best Albums".

Track listing

Personnel

Portishead

Beth Gibbons – vocals (all tracks), production
Geoff Barrow – Rhodes piano (tracks 1, 3, 4, 10), drums (tracks 6, 7), programming (tracks 2, 5, 7–9, 11), string arrangements (track 8), production
Adrian Utley – guitar (tracks 1–3, 5, 8, 11), bass guitar (tracks 6–9), theremin (track 1), Hammond organ (track 11), string arrangements (track 8), production

Additional musicians

Clive Deamer – drums (tracks 1, 3, 5, 7–10)
Gary Baldwin – Hammond organ (tracks 5–7)
Neil Solman – Rhodes piano (tracks 2, 8), Hammond organ (track 2)
Richard Newell – drum programming (track 4)
Andy Hague – trumpet (track 9)
Dave McDonald – nose flute (track 8)
Strings Unlimited – strings (track 8)

Technical personnel

Dave McDonald – engineering

Samples

Johnnie Ray – sample of "I'll Never Fall in Love Again" on "Biscuit"
Isaac Hayes – sample of "Ike's Rap II" on "Glory Box"
Lalo Schifrin – sample of "The Danube Incident" on "Sour Times"
Smokey Brooks – sample of "Spin It Jig" on "Sour Times"
Weather Report – sample of "Elegant People" on "Strangers"
War – samples of "Magic Mountain" on "Wandering Star"

Charts

Weekly charts

{| class="wikitable sortable plainrowheaders" style="text-align:center"

|+ 1995 weekly chart performance for Dummy

! scope="col"| Chart (1995)

! scope="col"| Peak position

! scope="row"| European Albums (Music & Media)

| 13

! scope="row"| Finnish Albums (Suomen virallinen lista)

| 19

! scope="row"| UK Dance Albums (OCC)

| 1

{| class="wikitable plainrowheaders" style="text-align:center"

|+ 2016 weekly chart performance for Dummy

! scope="col"| Chart (2016)

! scope="col"| Peak position

Year-end charts

{| class="wikitable sortable plainrowheaders" style="text-align:center"

|+ Year-end chart performance for Dummy

! scope="col"| Chart (1995)

! scope="col"| Position

! scope="row"| Belgian Albums (Ultratop Flanders)

| 55

! scope="row"| Belgian Albums (Ultratop Wallonia)

| 37

! scope="row"| Canada Top Albums/CDs (RPM)

| 39