Let's move on to another category now, because this 94 is kind of a peak for certainly the initial wave of trip hop, trip hop music.

Partly the reason it's a peak is because Portishead's dummy came out this year, which I guess along with massiveive Attacks Blue Lines is kind of the year zero for at least the the archetypal textbook trip hop record.

Now I know for example that Jeff Barrow from Port his head would hate that the album would be even considered as a trip hop record.

But Jeff, I'm sorry, this is kind of like the defining,

it's almost the defining record for trip-pop.

It's that idea of taking elements of lo-fi, plundafonics,

it's sampling stuff from old spy records,

and that kind of cold, almost kind of distant femme fatale female voice over the top

and those old John Barry Ennio Morricone guitar lines. To me that's kind of what I think of as

the quintessential trip pop sound. And this is the quintessential trip pop record. And actually it's

probably my least favorite Portishead record. I think it's the one that's dated the most, partly because it's the one

that's been the most imitated. I love their third record. I think the third record is amazing,

but they were reaching for something else there. This record has been endlessly imitated.

To the point, actually, when I went back to listen to it for the purposes of

talking about it here, it didn't quite have the impact that I remember it having on me

at the time, which was massive. Which was massive. I'm going to queue up, Tim. So what's

your take on this?

You know, it's dark, cinematic, dramatic, and it was something that I think we were both immediately drawn to. It was a fresh sound, plus it had enough of things that we already liked. As Stephen alluded to, there was quite a lot of a John Barry influence, and I think they even sampled Barry in a couple of the pieces. I mean, I would argue that these ideas had been out there for a few years.

Even some early no-man tracks like Colors or Days in the Trees were operating in a relatively

similar territory with relatively similar influences, but they pulled it together and

they pulled it together brilliantly.

And we heard this probably a few months before it was released because our A&R man at the publishing company at the time was trying to sign them for the publishing company.

...