ShockHound

Interview by Randy Bookasta

It’s unlikely that many folks outside of the West Coast of England had heard of the oddly named town of Portishead before an evocative trio with the same name rose to international prominence in the mid-’90s. Portishead maestro Geoff Barrow grew up in this quiet little shipping town located eight miles outside of Bristol; as legend has it, while gaining notoriety working in Bristol recording studios in the early ‘90s (with Massive Attack, Tricky and Neneh Cherry) he was continually referred to as “that guy from Portishead (the town).” Upon forming the band with vocalist Beth Gibbons and guitarist Adrian Utley, the name just stuck.
     With their alluring, cinematic soundscapes, it’s only fitting that Portishead’s first release in 1994 was not a record, but rather a short film, the noir-ish To Kill A Dead Man. The band’s accompanying soundtrack to the film — a 10-minute homage to ’60s spy movies that featured both Barrow and Gibbons in acting roles — drew the attention of Go Beat Records, who quickly signed them and released their groundbreaking debut Dummy the same year. That album — and 1997’s self-titled follow-up — went on to sell millions worldwide, resonating with everyone from hip-hop heads to headbangers to yuppie housewives.
     It’s been 10 years since Portishead’s last release, the epic Roseland NYC Live, captured at the Roseland Ballroom with the New York Philharmonic orchestra in 1998. Since then — with the exception of Beth Gibbons' beautiful solo turn Out of Season (recorded with Talk Talk’s Rustin Man and Utley) — nothing. One of the most captivating bands of the last 20 years went on hiatus for an entire decade, and one of the most glorious female voices in music was relegated to singing in the shower.
    But it wasn’t entirely for a lack of trying, as there were a few failed attempts to begin work on the album as far back as 2001, when Barrow and Utley holed up in an Australian studio for several weeks with little result. (At one juncture they played their record label rep seven tracks, yet when they met him for a progress report over a year later, they only had six.) In 2005, the band emerged to perform at a Tsunami benefit concert in Bristol, with news quickly circulating that the group had officially begun working on a new album. As things go with Portishead, three years later the album was finally unveiled.
     Appropriately, Portishead (the band) returned to Portishead (the town) in April to launch their enthralling Third with a live “webcast” performance of their new material, followed by a string of international concert dates and a triumphant headlining slot at 2008’s Coachella festival (their only US performance for this album). ShockHound had the rare opportunity to talk with Barrow and Utley on a recent visit to Los Angeles, learning about the pressures to evolve while still sounding like Portishead after all these years…

SHOCKHOUND: When recording Third, was there a conscious effort to create something that was different than what you have done before but still recognizable as Portishead?

GEOFF BARROW: Absolutely, you’ve kind of nailed it really. We had these rules to not repeat ourselves but sound like ourselves. That’s a difficult thing for some people and it was difficult for us. So that’s how we’ve ended up. We definitely don’t want to sound like we used to do… but we do. It’s a weird thing. So people who think the album is really odd, just listen to the old one. I’m not going to force you to buy this album. But other people have been genuinely excited. You can’t spend 10 years [away] and not say anything new. I think the reason the album took so long was every time we release a record we want to say something and I don’t think we, as three people, really had the energy or the feeling in our stomachs to really come out again. And now we have.

ADRIAN UTLEY: We had to sound like ourselves but we had to feel like we’ve moved on a lot. We wanted to achieve making music that satisfies us, is experimental, is vital and is what we want to do. I kind of think we’ve done that. We say we’re further down the road than we started out on. We’re the same people; we’ve just gone further on. New influences, more use of our old influences. I think we still sound recognizably like ourselves.


WATCH: Our exclusive video interview with Geoff and Adrian

SHOCKHOUND: One tag that you’ve finally abandoned with this record is “trip-hop.”

BARROW: Well, trip-hop is a weird one. It was devised by a journalist in London. It’s like an LA journalist coming up with a name for a type of band in New York. It was done by someone who didn’t have a clue then all the people in Bristol had to live with it for years. I mean, I’ve never listened to electronica and I’ve never listened to trip-hop. We have really varied musical taste. We listen to Madlib or Marley Marl and MC Shan. It’s massively diverse what we listen to, not to be music snobs but it’s just what we do.
     I don’t really chill out to music. I try and get music that really smashes my head in so chill out music isn’t something that comes into our thing. It’s quite weird, because I was around our hotel pool and they played one of our tracks and it was like, “Oh, for fuck’s sake…music to chill out to…great.”  
     I think that’s been a misconception of our music really. If you take it on a purely sonic vibe it could sound chilled. But if you get into it, which I think a lot of people have, they realize it’s more twisted than a lot of people thought it was. I’m not complaining because obviously it was popular and a lot of people bought it and it allowed us to stay in hotels with pools… to listen to our own music around the pool. That’s a vicious circle going on there!

SHOCKHOUND: Do you still feel a close connection to being a Bristol artist? What does that mean to you?

BARROW: Well, I like it because I choose to live there. We’ve never lived in London. [Same with] Massive Attack. Tricky moved out and that was good. I mean, he’s a brilliant artist, I think certain artists need or should get out of the place. I think Bristol is great because it doesn’t have a music industry infrastructure. It’s not governed by the music industry in London. It’s like Seattle or San Francisco; I kind of see it as a similar kind of thing. The big record companies are in LA or New York. It’s like Manchester and Bristol, you don’t feel that pressure. You can just make music you want to make. From living there most of my life, it just seems that no matter what style of music, people are fairly non-conformist [in Bristol]. It’s a nice place to live in that sense because it’s artistic. I’ve got a label (Invada) in Bristol that I’ve ran for a few years now that has been releasing Bristol music. It’s always been a musically vibrant city and will continue to be.

UTLEY: We have a sense of pride in our area and also a massive sense of disappointment in what Bristol could be but isn’t. There’s lots of cool music going on but probably stuff that will never get heard outside of some of the pubs or clubs in Bristol. There’s a lot of musical activity and it’s great to be a part of that. That’s why I moved to Bristol and Geoff moved to Bristol from Portishead. Beth moved to Bristol from the South. We gravitated to that city because it has some kind of magnetic thing for us. Other people move on but I’m very happy to be part of Bristol and all it is.

SHOCKHOUND: One of the more immediate differences on Third is the rhythm. Is it safe to say there was a Can or Krautrock influence?

BARROW: Well, I’ve listened to a lot of Can for years, but I’ve listened to a lot of different stuff. I’ve always been a massive fan of American hip-hop since I was a kid and I think there’s still people really breaking ground in it. I think people like Madlib when he did the Jaylib album with J. Dilla, that was a brilliant record. I think N.E.R.D. write some really good hip-hop beats. When I finished touring in 1998, I had no energy for sample-based beat music. I mean, you have someone like DJ Premier who always makes amazing music or Timbaland, but generally in the UK, I think it was in a dead zone. I was not interested in electronica or laptop tom foolery or glitch kind of stuff. Drum ‘n’ bass had gone kind of soft as well so for me, I wanted to look a different way. I wanted to find rhythms and beats and stuff, so I went back into British psychedelia and people like Moondog. [Music that] was heavy groove based but wasn’t pulled off your computer. The idea of creating new atmospheres and grooves, really, and that’s where I ended up. I got into playing more instruments. I’m a drummer really anyway. So yeah, there are different tempos. But generally, there’s a centralized feeling of frustration that drives the album  



SHOCKHOUND: Another thing is the record has no sampling, no scratching…

BARROW: I think scratching is a dead art form, really. Sorry to say that to people who are into it. I think it just became about technique. You have someone like DJ Babu and DJ Premier and the Invisibl Skratch Piklz, and they’re all brilliant [but] I think it ended up being all about technique. I had no interest in that at all. I don’t want to sound cocky, but it was part of my life. I just don’t think it moved on as an art form or music form.
     It’s like Mix Master Mike, he’s got real soul in it. He doesn’t need me to tell him he’s got soul but the way he deals with beats is rough and exciting! I had to get up on my scratching again to do the live shows and I hate it. I haven’t touched a turntable in 10 years and have no interest in it at all.

SHOCKHOUND: Apparently efforts to record the third Portishead album began as early as 2001?

BARROW: Yeah, in Australia. I was in Australia for a bit. I kind of quit music for a couple years after our tour because I just didn’t like it. It was doing my head in really. Then Adrian came over and we sat down and wrote but nothing came out because I didn’t have the fire in my belly. I was just on auto pilot. I was still making beats the old way I make beats and nothing was new. We did some good things but nothing that either of us thought was really ground breaking.

UTLEY: It wasn’t really right. It wasn’t the right time to be doing it; we didn’t have direction, good ideas. There were good tracks we did but they weren’t particularly good for us as Portishead tracks. It didn’t point in a new direction for us. It was the beginning of something really. It was just the beginning of being in the studio together and realizing what we had to do, where we were going to go and where we were not going to go.

SHOCKHOUND: At what point did you reconvene and start working on Third?

BARROW: It was about 2003. I think Adrian was on tour with Beth on her own album and I was back at the studio messing around. I wrote the track “Magic Doors” and then Beth came in and sang on it and it sounded alright. It sounded okay and [that feeling] stayed then.

UTLEY: I went on tour with Beth because I worked on her album quite a lot, playing on it and recording stuff. After we came back from Australia, Beth was ready to tour that so I went on tour with her for about a year. I think shortly after that or right in the middle of it, we worked on a track for a French album, a tribute to Serge Gainsbourg. That was good…and it was good with all of us back together. That was 2003…and then we started working in 2004 together fully.

SHOCKHOUND: How does it feel to be performing live in front of an audience again?

BARROW: The live shows have been strange because we’re a studio band primarily and the last time we toured it ended up in not a very good place. We were successful, I mean, we were headlining festivals to 50-60,000 people. But it just wasn’t us. We’re just not that kind of band. Festivals are always difficult sound wise as well because we take so much care. We need to do stuff before people come in but with a festival you don’t get to do that. You don’t really get a sound check. We try to create different atmospheres with different songs.
     You get a band like Rage Against The Machine. They come on stage. You got a drum sound, and then you got guitar, and then you got bass and a vocal. For us, it’s the opposite. We get one drum sound for one track and then we try and get another sound for another. But we don’t use computers or samples like a lot big dance bands that have a lot of stuff on tape. I remember seeing Moby on TV and the band is playing but there’s stuff going on underneath that makes it sound good. That’s not a slam on Moby, I mean, I don’t like Moby, but that’s not really it. There’s lots of bands that have that kind of thing where the drummer listens to a click and there’s a track running.  We just don’t have that. Lots of bands don’t but they’re usually rock ‘n’ roll bands and we’re not that rock ‘n’ roll.

SHOCKHOUND: It is a bit deceiving when you see an artist that has all kinds of great tracks already laid down that they’re not actually performing live …

BARROW: Well, we’re musicians really. It’s just that point. I’m not saying what Moby does is bad at all because it’s about entertainment. And when you pay to go to a show, you expect to be entertained and that’s where we have problems because we’re so weird about what we do. We’re not in the entertainment game. We’ve never really been at it to get famous. We’re just into making music. I’ve never really enjoyed playing live because I’m so worried about the music we’re making and whether it’s a decent representation of what we do in the studio…which sounds kind of anal. It sounds like some really over the top thing to say but we’re just a strange band.



SHOCKHOUND: Early in Portishead’s career, you talked about not wanting to play live at all…

UTLEY: Yeah, that’s interesting because we always thought Dummy was a pretty odd sounding record. At that time, we had no idea how we would play live, there wasn’t even any consideration to play it live. It was a record, we were going to put it out, hoped it would do okay enough so we could make another record. But because it did okay we needed to play live, so that was weird. It took us awhile to learn how to play to make it sound like the record, We didn’t want to use samples or loops or backing tracks, so we had to learn how to play it live.
     Amongst us, we always say I like playing live, Geoff doesn’t like playing live, and Beth is always really nervous but I think she enjoys it… but then she doesn’t. But now, I sometimes think, “This is so nerve wracking, why are we doing it?” In many ways, it’s very simple music to play but in other ways, it’s incredibly complex and difficult to get the sound absolutely right. But I think the good thing about playing live is that you get to see people who have bought your record and they’re really into it. It’s interesting to see your audience because otherwise it’s an abstract. They buy your record, get on your blogs and stuff, but you don’t really see in a physical way what it’s all about. You’re not engaged. I think it’s an important thing to do: make a record and play it live. Even if it’s for a short time like we’re doing now. You reinterpret…you understand the music a bit deeper than when you made it.

SHOCKHOUND: It’s been well documented that the pressures of touring and promotion after the success of the first two records took its toll on the band.  How have you approached those responsibilities this time around so you can take it more in stride?

UTLEY: Well, we’re not doing it for very long. We’re doing a very short period. That last time we were headlining loads of festivals, we were doing big gigs on our own and we did it for a year straight. There was lots of touring, lots of traveling, lots of press, lots of everything. It was full on. I think we’re kind of limiting that now. Having children, it’s important to be home. I was away for a month, Geoff’s got two kids, you know, and we miss them. And that’s a real thing.
     I realize it’s important to play. It’s important to play as a musician just to make music, to make creation with other people. For me, it’s like breathing air. If I don’t do it, I don’t feel good. That’s a reality, but also, having a child is a reality and wanting to spend time with them.

SHOCKHOUND: In closing, what’s next? Apparently there have been discussions about the next album already?

UTLEY: It’s hard to say that because we’re just talking about it now. We finished our album and we’re still into touring and promo for that. That is so all encompassing and so full on. We kind take care of everything we do…organizing T-shirt designs…everything has to be seen. It’s not about being control freaks, it’s running it how you want to. Often if you leave things to your record company to do it could end up a bit crap some times. We gotta go and mix our films and stuff. We take care of everything so it just takes up all the time there is. So, we’ll be talking more about the future, I guess, in a couple weeks time…

SHOCKHOUND: Or a couple months?

UTLEY: Or a couple years…or a decade!

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