Portishead - Dummy
Portishead - Dummy

Thumped Album Club – Week 24: Portishead – Dummy (1994)

This week’s selection for the Thumped Album Club is Portishead’s 1994 debut Dummy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NacRB6uOcGs

Dummy is the debut album of the Bristol-based group Portishead. Released in August 22, 1994 on Go! Discs, the album earned critical acclaim, winning the 1995 Mercury Music Prize. It is often credited with popularizing the trip-hop genre and is frequently cited in lists of the best albums of the 1990s. Although it achieved modest chart success overseas, it peaked at #2 on the UK Album Chart and saw two of its three singles reach #13. The album was certified gold in 1997 and has sold two million copies in Europe. As of September 2011, the album was certified double-platinum in the United Kingdom and has sold as of September 2011 825,000 copies.

Building on the promise of their earlier EP, Numb, it helped to cement the reputation of Bristol as the capital of Trip hop, a nascent genre which was then often referred to simply as “the Bristol sound”. The cover is a still of vocalist Beth Gibbons from the short film that the band created-To Kill a Dead Man-which originally got them signed due to their self composed soundtrack.

In addition to the already released “Numb”, the album spawned two further singles: the UK #13 hit “Glory Box” and “Sour Times”, which reached the same position, on re-release in 1995. 

Have your say at https://thumped.com/bbs/threads/portishead-dummy-1994.97766.

Previous Album Club selections can be found at https://thumped.com/tac

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