Dummy
| Portishead
Dummy
Dummy is the debut studio album by English electronic band Portishead, released on 22 August 1994 by Go! Beat Records. The album received critical acclaim and won the 1995 Mercury Music Prize. It is often credited with popularising the trip hop genre, and is frequently cited in lists of the best albums of the 1990s. -Wikipedia
Critic Reviews
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Pitchfork
Portishead’s 1994 debut is a masterwork of downbeat and desperation. They invented their own kind of virtuosity, one that encompassed musicianship, technology, and aura.
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BBC
Quite simply one of the greatest debut albums of the 1990s.
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Soundblab
There are few debuts as fully realized as that of Portishead’s 1994 release, Dummy.
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Clash Music
“‘Dummy’ has aged much more successfully than any other British album of the era.”
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Rolling Stone
From tape loops and live strings, Fender Rhodes riffing and angelic singing, these English subversives construct très hip Gothic hip-hop.
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XS Noize
Portishead’s “Dummy” has often been imitated but never replicated because masterworks cannot be truly copied and “Dummy” is a masterwork.
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Sputnik Music
This album comes thoroughly recommended to any fans of hip-hop (that's hip-hop music, not rap vocals), female soul vocalists, or anybody unfamiliar with trip-hop and who wants to experiment.
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New York Times
A trip-hop classic.
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Stereogum
I don’t know why or how Dummy worked like white-people Jodeci, but it sure as hell did.
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Audioxide
Dummy is a wonderful record that is undoubtedly of its time, yet continues to thrive in the headspace of the modern listener.
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Audioxide
Dummy’s murkiness is part of what makes it so emblematic of the ‘90s, but I also think that quality cuts the record off from being iconic in its own right.
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Audioxide
Spooky, smooth, and sensational.
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Bloody Disgusting
‘Dummy’ is one of those albums that are absolutely necessary for every album collection. I loved it the first time I hit play and I still love it in its entirety.
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All Music
Better than any album before it, Dummy merged the pinpoint-precise productions of the dance world with pop hallmarks like great songwriting and excellent vocal performances.
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Slant Magazine
Dummy, an album which undoubtedly conjures the thought of a person, place or sour time for its every listener, sounds just as groundbreaking today as it did eight years ago.
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PRI
A defining album of the time.
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Classic Album Sundays
heir distinctive blend enabled them cross over from a club fanbase to an indie audience which helped them win the coveted Mercury Music Prize.
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Vulture
Twenty years have passed, but as a testament to Barrow, Utley, and Gibbons’s integrity and to its own necessity, Portishead still bows to none.
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Crossfadr
Dummy helped inaugurate the UK trip-hop scene, opening doors for a whole wave of trip-hop acts including Tricky, Massive Attack, Morcheeba and the Sneaker Pimps.
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Vanyaland
A landmark album.
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The Guardian
It struck a nerve in what Barrow calls our “sonic unconscious… when sounds can merge with other sounds from somewhere else, and ultimately create emotion”.
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Aphoristic Album Reviews
Dummy is a glorious example of the way that the exploratory nature of the 1990s opened up new musical avenues; a band using technology to synthesise ideas and arriving at something original and heartfelt.
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Independent
Portishead defined the Nineties while remaining completely mysterious.
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Reverb
A mixture of creative sampling, adventurous recording techniques, and some sick vintage gear.
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Albumism
Dummy is a nearly perfect expression of a short-lived genre, with few acts that had the same impact as Portishead.
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Treble Zine
Portishead’s despairing, clattering version of soul across the whole of Dummy—the scene-setting “Mysterons,” the legitimately upbeat “Strangers,” the stroll into the sunset of “Glory Box”—earned its trip-hop label. Often imitated, never duplicated.
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Pop Matters
Music, be it from a guitar or a guitar that has been sampled, rearranged and repackaged, is still music—especially when it's done with such care as displayed by Utley, Barrow, and Gibbons.
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Music Musings and Such
When Dummy turns twenty-five on 22nd August, I think a lot of new people will discover this gem. I mentioned how Dummy still sounds fresh but, also, it reveals new layers and things that you might have missed.
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Louder than War
There will always be a young person somewhere needing to feel listened to and understood and Dummy will often find them.
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Get into This
What this record needs, what it deserves, is some nice warm sounding speakers. Turn the lights down low, the bass up high and find yourself something to help this glorious and melancholy medicine go down.
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Radio X
The frail vocals of Beth Gibbons complimented the eerie atmosphere concocted by Geoff Barrow and Adrian Utley.
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Across the Margin
Dummy is still Portishead’s mecca.
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Spectrum Culture
Like that room with decades of paint that you can’t muster the courage to paint over, the mélange of decades and the timelessness of a female crooner makes this album a classic.
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Music Times
With its dark yet sultry atmosphere, soulful vocals, and hip-hop beats, the album would perfect the burgeoning trip-hop genre and go on to influence artists such as Radiohead and Kanye West.
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The Student Playlist
Portishead, a three-piece consisting of producers and instrumentalists Geoff Barrow and Adrian Utley and fronted by singer and songwriter Beth Gibbons, did not invent trip-hop, but their 1994 debut album Dummy came to define it completely.
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Only Solitaire
Overall, a satanic masterpiece, and I haven't even mentioned all the backwards messages.
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Echoes and Dust
This album has become a trigger and it just opens my heart, and all the sadness and desperation leaks out.
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The Telegraph
Winners.
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The 405
It's very rare for an album to define a whole city; its ethos, its character and its culture. Dummy is that kind of album.
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Hotpress
Zappa arises from out of the layers of the compositions due to the degree of experimentalism Portishead bring to this outstanding, unforgettable listening experience.
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Nowhere Bros
A pioneering trip-hop album and formed part of what became known as the Bristol sound.
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FACT Magazine
Two decades on, Dummy still sounds as hypnotic and engrossing as it did then, a gritty take on hip-hop, 1960s movie soundtracks and traditional songwriting that laid bare the potentials afforded by sidestepping rigid genre formats.
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Tunedig
The unsettling-yet-sublime "Dummy" is a haunting masterclass in vibe.
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Album Chats
Although they slotted themselves nicely into the niche started by Massive Attack, it was Portishead who legitimized trip hop as the sound of the future.
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The Marquee
When Portishead’s debut album Dummy dropped in 1994, it was like a new musical species had been discovered.
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The Mezzanine
Dummy is one of the records to hear before you die.
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Lone Reviewer
This album is a classic and more than 20 years after his release, sound is still catchy and surprising.
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Prefix Mag
It’s a scrupulous accomplishment and a demonstration of the band’s vision, longevity, and focus, finding the members once again wading the headwaters of new genre.
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uDiscover Music
Portishead Captured The Zeitgeist Like No Other Band.
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Medium
The breakthrough album that defined trip-hop.
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