from the LP Dummy, Go! Beat Records, 1994This album came out of nowhere, as if someone had just taken a huge bonghit in Bristol and exhaled this smoky mix of jazz inspired hip-hop beats, carried aloft by the dulcet tones of singer Beth Gibbons; seriously folks, when this first dropped it literally affected my monthly marijuana budget, so many nights spent in candle-lit living rooms and bedrooms, blunted out of my mind, blasting Portishead. This particular track never fails to get my head bobbing, the hazy mid-tempo pace lulling me into a dazed state; the inclusion of that interlude at the beginning, with only Ms. Gibbons singing backed by an acoustic guitar, provides a dizzyingly blissful contrast to the fuzzed-out psychedelic beats that DJ and producer Geoff Barrow crafted here. The phrase “trip-hop” quickly came to be loathed by all those who had become thus dubbed, but I have to admit, it sort of described the vibes better than anything else we’ve come up with since…
