Dummy by Portishead

Portishead: Beth Gibbons (vocals); Adrian Utley (guitar, Hammond organ, bass, Theremin); Geoff Barrow (Fender Rhodes piano, drums, programming). Additional personnel: Strings Unlimited (strings); Dave McDonald (nose flute); Andy Hague (trumpet); Neil Solman (Fender Rhodes piano, Hammond organ); Gary Baldwin (Hammond organ); Clive Deamer (drums); Richard Newell (programming). Recorded at State Of The Art and Coach House Studios, Bristol, England. Named for a town near Bristol, England, Portishead is a British dance band that grabs ideas from all over the mod pop world (spaghetti Western guitars, turntable scratching, melancholy soul vocals, atmospheric organs, house beats) and stirs them into spacey, dub-like productions that sound like a dance club in the middle of a"Twin Peaks"dream. You could call it surreal hip-hop pop. But if the beats on the band's debut album achieve a kind of trance-like static, the songs themselves reach for something more rousing. With understated lyrics and overstated melodie...