Crack

Radio One’s king of dance music Pete Tong was interviewing a well-known Bristol producer on the radio the other day. When discussing Bristol’s place in the UK’s musical order, you could feel the direction the interview was about to take. Crack waited for the obvious.

“Bristol has a very rich tapestry of music ... Are you influenced by artists from back in the day? ... Going back to the days of Massive Attack, Smith and Mighty and Roni Size, do you think there is still a Bristol sound? ... I can hear a bit of Bristol in your music.”
Aside from hearing nothing of said artists in the music of the producer in question, the commonly held ‘Bristol Sound’ stereotype that has plagued and continues to plague Bristol is an insult to those creative people that make Bristol such a rich and diverse place to live these days. One band that was left off Pete’s ‘Bristol Sound’ list, perhaps with very good reason, is Portishead.

To the uneducated, Portishead, comprising of Geoff Barrow, Adrian Utley and lead singer Beth Gibbons, released one of the most sonically groundbreaking records of all time in 1994 with the haunting and beautiful, Dummy, which won the much coveted 1995 Mercury Music Prize. Their self-titled follow-up was released in 1997 to much acclaim, and, along with Bristol counterparts Massive Attack were subsequently dumped into a new genre. Trip-hop was born.

Aside from being a music-writer buzzword, both Portishead and Massive Attack failed to identify with the genre, and the term morphed on a wider scale to incorporate others who were making bass-influenced music at the time. The term ‘Bristol Sound’ became commonplace, and this collective stereotyping of Bristolian music has continued ever since. In truth the musical tapestry of Bristol has progressed a long way since 1997. For Portishead, a 10 year hiatus followed. The returned in 2008 with an updated, tougher sound and a discernibly harder edged record. On the aptly titled Third, Portishead did much to disassociate themselves from the stereotype.

On standout tracks Machine Gun and Silence, the band showed themselves in a new light, combining experimental sonics and heightening the interplay between Barrow’s underlying hip-hop beatsmith credentials, Utley’s menacing guitar and, of course, Gibbons’s chilling vocals. If the line-up and the integral parts had remained the same, the output was updated and utterly thrilling. The sparseness and stoned mantra of trip-hop’s heyday was replaced with diversity and sinister overtones that showcased Portishead as band awake and as potent as they’ve ever been.

After Third, collective solo projects and musical interests were reconvened, and the opportunity to curate a two-day All Tomorrow’s Parties event called I’ll Be Your Mirror at Alexandra Palace presented itself. After programming a similar event for ATP in 2008, it was a musical institution that the band felt comfortable working with as well as giving them the chance to return to live action together before a string of summer festival dates.

Featuring some of the most captivating artists of recent times, as well as a few classics, the line-up showcases a Portishead on the cusp of relevant music. PJ Harvey, Caribou, Liars, Beach House, MF Doom, Grinderman and Godspeed You! Black Emperor have all been sourced and the venue, the beautiful North London raised palace, should make the event a true spectacle.

Crack caught up with Geoff and Adrian at their Easton studio to work out the future, the past and everything else.



How did the ATP thing come about? Why did it feel right to get back into it and do I’ll Be Your Mirror?

Adrian: We’d been talking about touring, and we did something with Barry (Hogan, founder of ATP) before in 2008. It’s all tied in nicely and it’s really, really cool to get bands films and books we all like and get them in one place. It’s getting that wish list together, which is always fun, but also supporting ATP, which is such a cool festival.

Geoff: It was a bit of weird one. I knew Barry and Deborah from the 2008 one we curated in Minehead and we trust them massively to do the right thing. They are friends of ours now. It seemed like the right home for us. Because festivals are going a certain direction, you are more likely to find N-Dubz playing a festival now than you are someone like Mogwai. It’s good people are seeing live music, but it’s just about who you can trust. We did it with ATP before and it was brilliant so they came back and asked if we’d put on another one. So we thought we’d do it and then go to the US, because in touring the last record we didn’t go there – we only played Coachella. So we’re doing another ATP at Asbury Park in New Jersey. It’s the home of Bruce Springsteen; the town mayor is really on board with it and is closing the promenade for the day. It’s on the beach and it’s going to be great.

Who is particularly exciting you on the bill you’ve curated?

Adrian: Polly Harvey, Grinderman and Liars especially. Godspeed You! Black Emperor took ages to confirm, so now we’ve got them it’s great. I’m really excited about showing a film by Mark Cousins in which he went to Iraq and gave cameras to kids and made a documentary film about the war zones. He’s giving a talk and showcasing the movie. Richard Ayoade, who directed Submarine is also giving a talk.

Geoff: PJ Harvey has released one of the best records I’ve heard in a long time. Grinderman are great; Company Flow are great and classic. We just drew up a wish list and found out who was around. We had some people on the list that broke up 20 years ago, so there are a lot of conversations that went on. Barry ultimately has his finger on the pulse of interesting music pretty much worldwide. Whether it be a commercial band that people know, or absolutely iconic acts like My Bloody Valentine – they trusted Barry to look after their interests and reform. I was worried about it being a little soulless, so we’ve tried to do things with Barry and Debbie to continue an ATP vibe. There’ll be odd things round each corner when you’re there. It won’t be like you’re going to see Elbow, get your pint, watch ‘em and walk off. ATP has always had that constant artistic flow to it, so there’ll be other things going on when you’re there. At Alexandra Palace you won’t be camping, but the stuff we’re putting on there will be interesting.

You’ve gone for a strong venue with Alexandra Palace – an iconic place to hold the festival in London?

Adrian: We didn’t pick it. I’ve never been there. I’ve never seen it. My only concern is what it’s going to sound like in there, with lots of glass and high ceilings. I’m sure it’ll be fine.

Were the acts you chose to play a joint decision between the three of you?

Geoff: We pass everything through Beth, but she’s not massively knowledgeable of modern music. That’s not a bad thing. I don’t think she particularly listens to much modern music, she just writes music. So Adrian and myself, through Invada [Barrow’s record label], other people we’ve worked with and people we like, have a brilliant ticket to choose bands we’re really into.

Why did now feel the right time for Portishead to tour again? As well as these shows, you have some festival dates coming up over the summer.

Adrian: We want to do a new record and for the last record we only did six months touring. Not enough really. People were popping their heads up everywhere saying how great it was, which was brilliant, so not enough people saw that show. I also think it’s good because it gets us all together again.

Geoff: We just want to go out and enjoy it again. The last tour we did for Third was good, but it was a bit short. It was like, ‘oh, is that it?’ I also think the relationship between radio and records have pushed touring a different way now. I think releasing a record and playing a gig are equally as important. So we need to do gigs because we don’t get a lot of radio support as various powers don’t deem us to be as important.

So in terms of Portishead’s direction, do you feel like you are building back up to creating new music again, like you’re building momentum as a band?

Adrian: I think that’s exactly what it is. After we’ve finished touring, I think we’ll be doing Portishead again. So what we are doing right now is trying to wrap up all the different side projects we’ve got going on. I’ve been looking at lots of old Portishead videos and remembering what I did before.

Geoff: The idea is we finish in November, go away for Christmas and then come back and start writing. At the moment I haven’t got anything in me that wants to bust out. I think I understand where the music needs to go, but I’m not ready to start it, and now we have the tour.

So what side projects have you been working on?

Adrian: I’ve been working on a soundtrack to a film that we are showing at ATP (The Passion of Joan of Arc). So I’ve been working with Will Gregory from Goldfrapp on this. It’s got lots of overlapping electric guitars and a medieval choir; it’s quite out there. I’ve been getting into playing more orchestral music and getting more involved with that for the film. I’ve also been massively getting into Steve Reich. He writes lots of minimalist orchestral music along with Terry Riley. That’s influenced me massively of late.

Geoff: Working with a number of artists on Invada, and recently the soundtrack for a film.

In terms of the last record (Third) there was a massive gap (10 years) between second and third albums. Why was there such long break?

Geoff: My reasoning was we had a bit of a shocker the last time we were out there in 1998. The tour was very long and as a result people got divorced, got ill and it wasn’t a pleasurable experience – the whole thing wasn’t – so we just thought, ‘is this want we want to do?’ So I pissed off to Australia, Adrian took some time off, Beth wanted to regroup and there was nothing to say for us, especially in my case. I needed to get all the crap I had in me right out there and rediscover love again for music. It wasn’t till I came back to England, set-up Invada and started checking out music I’ve never listened that all of a sudden there was a real natural growth for me.

Adrian: We finished touring and the whole period was really fucking intense and I’d had enough of it. We tried to mix the live album we did as a very final thing and we were trashed. I just subsequently got on with other things. It was quite obvious we didn’t want to do Portishead anymore. It just happened to be a good period of time until we wanted to start working on a new album because we had other projects going on. I worked on Beth’s album, Out Of Season, with Rustin Man and a lot of other things.

That period, around 97/98, would have been the peak of the commercial success of the trip-hop sound.

Geoff: We were in that world in 1994, but from that time onwards, because we toured in America, we missed all the crap going on in the UK. I think the main bands that were involved with it didn’t want anything to do with it.

Adrian: The bands that were copying the style and all of the sounds you could stereotypically call ‘trip-hop’, they disappeared didn’t they? Because they had fuck all else to say other than copy what they heard from this area, or whatever. So they fucked off. The people that were making that kind of music have moved on.

Geoff: It’s a standard quote from us: ‘Made in Bristol, but named in London.’ I really like Tricky and Massive Attack, but I didn’t like much else that came out that had the trip-hop label attached to it.

So was the fact these bands disappeared a vindication for the quality of your music – that despite a 10-year gap, you continued to remain relevant?

Adrian: Well, we didn’t listen to trip-hop to make it, we listened to hip- hop and dance music and dub and whatever else our influences were at that time. So that originality hopefully shone through.

When Crack was young and into the first two Portishead records, we found ourselves constantly asking ‘why the fuck aren’t they making a new record?’ So the direction you went in on Third was a bit of a shock – it seemed like a rejection of what you’d call ‘trip-hop’. Was the period of circumstantial change you mentioned earlier reflected in the third record?

Adrian: The period in between nailed the fact we didn’t want to sound like that any more.

Geoff: For me, I’d said everything I wanted to say. I had to discover something new. You don’t want to repeat. You’ve released an album in 1998 - in 2008 do you really want to repeat yourself? It would have been fucking awful. It’s easy for me to say that, but we wouldn’t have ever wanted to do that.

Anyone who saw there was 10 years between releases would automatically get the impression the process must have been really fraught?

Adrian: It does sound a bit dramatic, what with Geoff going to Australia and a coming together again after ten years, but it wasn’t that bad at all really. There wasn’t any animosity or anything. In a band there is always some kind of shit going on. Beth wasn’t around at that time when we first got back together before we started Third, so it was just me and Geoff hanging out together in a little room and we had a massive buzz about the music again. Previously we’d lost that and we got it back.

Geoff: It wasn’t fraught personally; it was just difficult to write and to discover new angles. There was very little sampling. It’s not laptop. I listen to a lot of music now and I hear laptops. I just hear the Apple noise.

You’ve clearly never been a fan of overly clean production?

Geoff: Individuality comes from using different instruments and differenttools and I think that different tools make different products and different art – even if the tools are a bit fucked. If you use the same tools you can end up with a very similar sound. Even stuff that kind of makes out it’s dirty is just a digital distortion that pretends to create excitement, but actually doesn’t. It’s just people go, ‘OK, here’s quite a good idea, let’s distort the fuck out of it and make the kids start jumping.’

So you aren’t massive fans of dubstep then?

Adrian: I don’t really know much about dubstep. I think it probably was interesting.

Geoff: Is it dead yet?

No, it’s just commercially morphed in some quarters so it’s now just more closely related to dirty electro music.

Geoff: That’s what happened to jungle music. You always get some people who are really creative with it and develop their own sound. Then you get people who just bastardise the sound and whack a massive bassline and distortion over the top. Unfortunately all those guys who created original dubstep are probably all going, ‘ah fucking hell, man. What happened?’

Adrian: Drum and bass was very cool and then it became very un-cool and the same with trip-hop. But music is so fast-moving and exciting. I remember going to Roni Size’s early nights at the Thekla. Fucking brilliant. Really loud and really intense, but music moves on. The same will happen with dubstep.

Do you think it’s just a case of growing up and becoming more mature in you tastes?

Adrian: Well I am listening to more orchestral music these days and I don’t know whether that’s an age thing or I’m just thoroughly fucking bored with what’s going on elsewhere. Though it is great you’ve got kids who are 21 still making music that makes me go, ‘how the fuck are you doing that?’ I would just never do it myself or even pontificate on it.

Do you think it’s all just about bringing it down to the lowest common denominator?

Geoff: Well, basically people talk about trip-hop or whatever – that style of music ended up on an ice-cream advert. It’ll be the same ice-cream advert, just with a dubstep beat this time. It happens so quickly now. The advertisers go straight to the pop stars and the producers and loads of them sell their art really cheaply.

Is sell-out advertising music a frustration of both of you?

Geoff: I’ve got nothing against those styles of music and how people make them, but it just gets to the point where it’s like having a preset button on a keyboard. Like hitting dubstep preset. Hip-hop preset. It’s the new generic bossanova, quick-time, disco beat preset tunes you get on your keyboard. It’s the same shit isn’t it? The trouble is the general public don’t care whether it’s the imitation or if it’s the real thing. Somehow the two got mangled up somewhere.

Adrian: I don’t really watch TV or adverts. I appreciate they’ve got to be there. Shit has to be advertised for you to know it’s there. Filmmakers get a break through advertising and that can be good. Sometimes you get a great ad with very cool music, but very rarely because advertising agencies that commission them are moneymaking cunts, the lot of them.

There must be things in modern culture that do excite you?

Adrian: I’m quite excited by modern culture because I’ve got a shit filter I can switch on and off and certain things don’t bother me. Just don’t watch the telly. I definitely don’t do Facebook or Twitter or anything like that shit. I’ve just never done it. I know there are some interesting things I can talk about on there, but the plethora of shite that comes out of it – I’d just get deluged and overwhelmed. I do worry about some of the things I don’t get involved with, but at the end of the day it’s just more cack to go through. On a personal level, only people that are really concerned about being informed about everything really go in for that shit. Me, I’ve got two kids and I’ve got other things I’m interested in. I’ve only got a finite amount of time and brain space to deal with it all. I can’t process that much information.

As a band do you hang out as mates at all?

Geoff: We can do, but we work together so closely, the time we aren’t together we don’t tend to. We’ve got families and kids, so we don’t that often.

Adrian: I have such a laugh with Geoff still after all these years. Together we have the ability to destroy each other and also this fantastic, sarcastic ability to slag everything off in the world. It’s like a flamethrower. We nuke everything to the ground and start again. That’s definitely Geoff ’s approach. That’s why we get on so well. He’s much more vocal in the press than I am, I’m much more reticent because I don’t want all the shit coming back at me. I just find it really funny.

As a front women of a successful band, I can’t think of another woman, other than Karin from The Knife perhaps, who is such an enigma to people as Beth. She doesn’t do interviews and keeps herself entirely away the limelight.

Adrian: You can get to know Beth through her music. It’s not a deliberate marketing move to have Beth who doesn’t speak – she’s just not comfortable talking in interviews, but she is comfortable talking. I couldn’t tell you why. Just generally she’s uncomfortable in that situation. When she was doing her solo album with Rustin Man, I produced a couple of tracks and played a little bit on it on, but it wasn’t my project. Then when we were on tour, she asked me to so some radio interview for her - it barely had anything to do with me!

Geoff: She basically is a very, very interesting person that I’ve been lucky enough to work with throughout all these years. She is incredibly truthful and she has an amazing existence of not being caught up in any bullshit. I totally admire the way she lives. She is incredibly passionate about human beings, yet at the same time doesn’t stand for any crap. I think sometimes I’ve said things that have misrepresented her or the writer has misrepresented what I’ve said about her. I totally respect her and always want to continue working with her. And Adrian for that matter.



Beth Gibbons front cover shot by Charles Emerson
http://www.charlesemerson.co.uk/


She must have one of the most distinctive voices ever? When you are crafting music, do you always have her voice in mind?

Geoff: She writes the songs and we all produce together. It’s a struggle to try and write good songs, it can take a long time and it’s not easy, but she sometimes has the natural ability to sing something and we all stand back and go, ‘oh wow!’ whereas other times it might take three years.

Adrian: She’s always writing and working. You never know where it’s going with her. She’s always up to something for films or other artists. She’s very articulate, very musical and very driven and focused.

Where do you think the sound will go on the next record?

Geoff: More refined in the sense of traditional songwriting, but more sonically intriguing. There are things on Third that didn’t need to be there. That is an example of how difficult writing can be. Commercially? There is no question of ‘commercially’ any more; you’ve just got to write the best thing you can. Maybe in the 90s people used to ask, ‘what is your single going to be?’ It just doesn’t matter any more. The only thing you can do is write the best song you can write.

Sometimes singles pick themselves, don’t they?

Geoff: Yeah, the one that doesn’t go on for 12 minutes.

Do you ever feel pressure to put out a record? Portishead have always seemed to be band who are very autonomous and in control of their own destiny?

Adrian: It was an attitude that we started off with that made sure losing control was never going to happen. It’s not like we rested on our laurels. We have to work – I’ve got expenses, so has Geoff. We have to work, but the amount of things we’ve turned down is ridiculous. We did use our music in a commercial sense once and we really fucking regretted it. Our premise has never been about making money or piling albums out. It’s kept what we have done special between us. I remember working on a more commercial project with Geoff and saying: “I don’t think we should be doing this together, it’s tainting our musical relationship. You can’t really be arsed and I can’t really be arsed and I don’t want that.”

Geoff: The only pressure I feel is from competition in the world. If someone drops something that is really interesting, then I take it personally that I haven’t done that piece. That’s more of an old hip-hop thing really. Someone would drop a beat and there would be a lot of envy. That’s disappeared over the years. That kind of rivalry in music has disappeared and now it’s more of a rival with modern media as it’s so fucked.

In what way is the modern media fucked?

Geoff: Just the way the media reports politically, musically, whatever – it’s all spiraling down a plughole. The dumbing down of society, really. What we’ve tried to do with the label is try and get interesting music to people we know are going to dig it, but just don’t get to hear it. The dumbing down of the arts is insane. I really am totally excited by things like what is going on in Stokes Croft and the student riots in London. It creatively gives me a shot in the arm to think people care enough to put themselves in some kind of danger.

So is there anyone standing up against what you call this ‘dumbing down’ who you admire?

Geoff: Does anyone know any kind of young artist who has any kind of socio-political agenda to their music? Even if it was Radiohead with OK Computer.

That was quite underlying though wasn’t it?

Geoff: It doesn’t even matter if it was underlying. There isn’t even that. A prime example of someone who was political through Bristol’s history and punk ethic was Tricky, but now no one is saying anything. Is there a band who is actually political in Stokes Croft? Somehow someone has got a massive bread-knife and cut right down the middle of how music and political movement can go hand in hand. They aren’t combined now, and somewhere like Stokes Croft should be supporting that. I wouldn’t expect Portishead to connect with an 18-year old, but imagine there was a Public Enemy or a Rakim or even an Ice Cube singing something like Today Was A Good Day, it would be great. Even early Eminem would work right now. Odd Future and Tyler, The Creator are a good bet now, maybe that’ll galvanise the kids.

Stokes Croft is the epitome of somewhere with all the right intentions but no execution though, isn’t it? A great attitude, but very little musical innovation perhaps, and a lot of wreck heads.

Adrian: There are some great things going on in Stokes Croft. It reminds me a lot of Berlin in many ways. The look of it and the fact there is a bit of power to the people. The arts culture there is great and the fact people are looking to do positive things with disused buildings. People there are really looking into being creative. It’s not even that underground. On another level, what about that shit that dominates the skyline from my window (Cabot Circus). It’s like a great icon to spending and then there is the brilliance of Stokes Croft happening right next to it. It’s just utter shite. Why have we not got a concert venue in Bristol? Cabot Circus sarcastically is just what we need when the country is plummeting into penury and we’ve spent the fuck out of our collective credit cards buying gold gates.

You are quite vocal about the state of modern music, is the lack of politics a large part of that?

Geoff: Because there are less jobs being created at a high level, there is less input from more people, so instead of looking at radio and TV and now even the internet in some places, interesting things are harder to find. So unless you have a back-story with a celebrity, it doesn’t work for you to get exposed.

So modern indie music frustrates you then? It’s all got a bit watered down hasn’t it?

Adrian: I just don’t listen to them.

Geoff: I’ve listened to people like Florence And The Machine and I just don’t get it. I’m not being an old twat, but when I listen to The Horrors and The xx and other things, it seems they don’t get a shot. It’s very difficult to get investment in art and it means smaller labels have to spend 10-15 grand per release just to get people to hear it and it shouldn’t be like that. You see touted bands that aren’t particularly good, but because they have pluggers, advertising and everything behind them they do well. You’ve now got people going, ‘oh yeah I really like indie music, I really like Ellie Goulding.’ Polly Harvey has probably made the best British album for many years with Let England Shake. That should really be rated. You don’t fuck with Polly Harvey. If people want to get grimy and dirty with her past and her gigs and what she’s done over the years, she’s been there man! She hasn’t gone to manufactured stage school or played Radio One’s Big Weekend. But you have this new crop of people who sell records all straight out of stage school. No! No!

It’s not a very real platform for our rock stars is it?

Geoff: There are so many really interesting people that don’t tick the boxes. You end up having to be grouped in a box like being geeky, or cool, or a rocker or whatever image Skins tells you real life is all about, but if you are actually a bit fucked and a bit different, people tell you that you’re fucking weird and they don’t want to know, when these are the most interesting people. You know Mumford And Sons – I don’t want my indie bands to be into pheasant shooting. I’ve got nothing against privileged people and I’ve been privileged, but my issue is if you do anything against the grain or you kick out against something and be a bit of a wanker, the industry won’t touch you. I would love a punk revival. Just not like The Libertines.



Portishead curate I'll Be Your Mirror at Alexandra Palace on July 23rd and 24th.

http://www.atpfestival.com/events/ibymportishead.php



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Photo: John Minton

Tune: Silence

http://www.portishead.co.uk

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