Album artwork for Dummy by Portishead
Album artwork for Dummy by Portishead

The classic debut Portishead album from 1994. The collaboration of studio whiz Geoff Barrow and singer Beth Gibbons, Dummy was made at the same time as a short film noir called To Kill a Dead Man, and the same approach - gloomy, tormented, and wildly melodramatic - permeates the album.

"Sour Times" (the hit in which Gibbons cries, again and again, "nobody loves me, it's true") and the more cryptic "Glory Box" are the lynchpins of the album, defining its sound: dark flashes of old soul and film music, dehumanised electronic bleeps, Gibbons emoting like she's consumed by shame, and a bass-and-beat pulse derived from the slow bump and grind of the Bristol scene that spawned Barrow's old collaborators.

Portishead

Dummy

Universal-Island Records Ltd.
Album artwork for Dummy by Portishead
LP

£29.99

Black
Released 20/01/2023Catalogue Number

8285221

Learn more
Portishead

Dummy

Universal-Island Records Ltd.
Album artwork for Dummy by Portishead
LP

£29.99

Black
Released 20/01/2023Catalogue Number

8285221

Learn more

The classic debut Portishead album from 1994. The collaboration of studio whiz Geoff Barrow and singer Beth Gibbons, Dummy was made at the same time as a short film noir called To Kill a Dead Man, and the same approach - gloomy, tormented, and wildly melodramatic - permeates the album.

"Sour Times" (the hit in which Gibbons cries, again and again, "nobody loves me, it's true") and the more cryptic "Glory Box" are the lynchpins of the album, defining its sound: dark flashes of old soul and film music, dehumanised electronic bleeps, Gibbons emoting like she's consumed by shame, and a bass-and-beat pulse derived from the slow bump and grind of the Bristol scene that spawned Barrow's old collaborators.