Albums by Portishead
ALBUMThirdPortishead
ALBUMPortisheadPortishead
ALBUMDummyPortishead
Portishead's Popular Music Videos
Machine Gun
Portishead
Glory Box
Portishead
Mysterons Filmed Live At Coachella Festival 2008
Portishead
Wandering Star
Portishead
Numb
Portishead
Silence Filmed Live At Coachella Festival 2008
Portishead
Only You
Portishead
Threads Filmed Live At Coachella Festival 2008
Portishead
Glory Box
Portishead
All Mine (Live In New York)
Portishead
Artist Playlists
Portishead Essentials
From trip-hop pioneers to widescreen specialists.
Portishead: Influences
Where Public Enemy met Nina Simone.
Inspired by Portishead
The Bristol, UK sound that shaped a generation.
Artist Biography
Named for a coastal town near their home base of Bristol, England, the pioneering trip-hop band Portishead created a hauntingly seductive form of electronic music.
• Producer and multi-instrumentalist Geoff Barrow met singer Beth Gibbons in 1990 at a training for Enterprise Allowance, a government program that gave unemployed people money to start their own business.
• The pair began making music together and soon added Adrian Utley, a jazz session guitarist with an impressive library of spy films. Utley and Barrow began combining influences and creating Portishead’s original sound.
• The band’s landmark 1994 debut album, Dummy, reached No. 2 on the UK charts and earned the prestigious Mercury Prize. The singles “Sour Times” and “Glory Box” both went Top 20.
• Portishead’s self-titled 1997 sophomore album also reached No. 2 in the UK and just missed the Top 20 in the US. The single “All Mine” became their first—and to date only—Top 10 single in the UK.
• In the years that followed, Barrow moved to Australia and took a break from making music. Portishead finally returned in 2008 with Third, which reached No. 7 on the US charts and gave the band their third consecutive No. 2 placement in the UK.
Hometown
Bristol, England
Genre
Electronic