Source: Puncture, Spring 1995, No. 32
Portishead
Dummy
(Go! Discs/London)

This Bristol, England band consist of studio wunderkind/multi-instrumentalist Geoff Barrow and vocalist Beth Gibbons,
supplemented by numerous session musicians and a host of elegantly plied (and annotated) samples. With Barrow (a famed
remixer of material as diverse as Primal Scream and Gravediggaz) at the console, Dummy comes on like a pure epiphany of
studio technology. Calling this record slick is apt enough (that's what it aims to be); calling it smooth is exact. Portishead present
the listener with spare, chilling soundscapes driven by mellow hiphop beats and the soul-inflected vocals of Gibbons. The duo's
work astutely creates a shimmering and suggestive atmosphere that confers a near-cinematic quality; too dramatically charged
to be just a soundtrack, these numbers work like a kind of sonic cinema.

Dummy pulls back the curtain with the slow, sinuous "Mysterons", a song that could be mood music for a robotic film noir: its
forward thrust is conferred by a mellow dance throb minimally fleshed out with guitar, Rhodes keyboard, and wispy but artful
theramin figures. "Sour Times" concocts sultry atmospherics via a programmed hiphop shuffle, a healthy dose of hazy
'60s-detective-show guitar tremolo, and a recurrent, shivering sample culled from the "Mission Impossible" soundtrack;
Gibbons graces this with her most provocatively smoky performance.

With "It Could Be Sweet", things turn soulful. Amid a swaying organ line and canned, narcotically muted drums, Gibbons
comes on like a blue-eyed, sugar-coated version of Sade (without that singer's oft-tedious faux-jazz trappings). All told, a
dazzling debut.

Phil Pegg