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Zep Singer's Fave Rave Turns In A Winner

By Neil Strauss

In an interview with Robert Plant this summer, I asked him to name last piece of music he had heard that sent shivers down his spine. His answer almost made up for all the cocky, sardonic, and arrogant (though quite funny) comments he had made over the course of the afternoon. It was Portishead's Dummy, one of the most original sounding albums to be released this year. If Led Zeppelin's music explored the contrasts between light and shade, Portishead's explores the differences between high and low.

An English band named after a small English town, Portishead use dance music as the starting point for their study in contrasts. On the top of the music floats the voice of Beth Gibbons. Her soprano hangs lightly in the air, dreamy and completely alone. Far below it, an electronic bassline throbs, pulses, and buzzes and a slow drumbeat fades in and out. Occasionally, a funk record squawks slowly and atmospherically, a theremin (the early electronic instrument) hums creepily, or a trumpet solos in the void.

Where England's ambient musicians are having trouble making a full album of dance music sound interesting, Portishead succeed by approaching their music visually as much as sonically. Lyrics like "Can anybody see the light, where the moon meets the dew," from "Strangers," seem to come more from the mind of a cinematographer than a musician; and it's more than the "Mission Impossible" sample in "Sour Times" that drives this album on like a suspense thriller. Slow organ melodies, that plodding bass rumble, and Gibbons' voice, like that of a dance-music diva lost in a hip-hop groove, all add up to an album that prides itself on being eerie, eerie enough to send spook even a rocker as hardened as Robert Plant.

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Zep Singer's Fave Rave Turns In A Winner