Portishead
Glory Times

PORTISHEAD is a place in the South of England located on the coasts of Somerset. It has been home to important Power Stations, a Radio Station managed by British Telecom for direct communications to and from the sea. The town is characterized by a temperate climate, and its frequent rains are largely due to Atlantic depressions. The current population is about 25,000 inhabitants.
The affinities with another American city are all to be supposed. Not to Portland.
The Portishead from Bristol sound take their name from this port town.

[P]: Geoff Barrow, Beth Gibbons, Adrian Utley with Clive Deamer and Dave McDonald.
Their story, turntables and vinyl records, scratches from Spy Movies, samples of musicians that exist and don’t exist, jazz, big beat incursions, loops, trip-hop labels, soul. The blue elegance of Dummy (1994), the black screech of Portishead (1997), the reflectively electronic anguish of Third (2008), the electric white of this 1995 double single that catalogs Theme from to Kill a Dead Man from the 1994 short film that represents their first ever attempt at artistic production, even before their genuine recording debut, and nine alternative versions and mixes of the singles from the debut LP: 'Glory Box' and 'Sour Times', from which the portmanteau for the title of the records. Glory Times showcases all their stylistic versatility in the mid-'90s and an eclecticism that is discernible but always almost hidden by the lesser quantity of their publications, revealing how the ensemble could have sounded either alternative stuff (Airbus Reconstruction), or lost in dub basses and paiste and zildjian cymbals hit by the spirit of the streets they lived and walked. Too many nights out or awake anyway, in the company of too much smoke, hoarseness, and a catarrhal cough threatening bronchitis and/or pneumonia from cooling. Sensations of wet air and smoke from a Winston Blue held in the air by humidity, the smell of fish caught from the pier, the Go! Beat, Fish and Chips, umbrellas and raincoats, all King Tubby’s sound systems, their peculiar Port Blues.

Chorus One / BLUES. Blues is a very peculiar music, a music full of soul. Blues suits many moods, it suits if you’re sad or happy, excited or dry, depressed or high, drunk or sober, on or off, serene or restless, supportive or mean, solar or lunar. Blues manages to cloak a wide range of emotions with its blue notes. This adaptability allows us to assert without too much hesitation that, even if its origins are clearly past, for me personally Blues is the most important music of the '900s. Beyond twelve bars, beyond Mephisto.
Neon-Blue that drips tense volts and smog. Stardogs.
These Souls got the Blues. Blues comes from ways Above the Traffic - Nearly God.

Polaroids. The writer believes that one should remain human. The writer does not like photos of people, nor to be photographed by people, nor to look at photographs of himself. The writer mostly loves photos of isolated places, abandoned or even traversed by anonymous masses whose facial features cannot be distinguished, snapshots of service areas, of railway stations. The writer believes that, if it were deemed necessary, more polaroids should be taken and taken of oneself, that certain imperfections should be loved, if only to avoid being datable or becoming postcards of oneself. More opportunities should be given to imperfection, one should always try to stay outside the places frequented by everyone who wants the Boulevards of Paris to always be romantic and Prague always mysterious. The writer, for example, would have expected a deliciously transgressive city, but no one had warned him that Amsterdam was a profoundly religious city, there in a dark alley he met God, he was black and preaching Evolution Revolution Love in sprechgesang looking upwards from a giant screen inside a fast food, Jamaica and Rome. Karmacoma, jamaican aroma. Postcards from Portishead.

Portishead do nothing but take polaroids since their inception, they do nothing but be imperfect in their retro productions in taste and modern in sound rendering, they have never done anything but be imperfect in their being collateral to the mainstream. Perfection can be ugly and has nothing but temporary impeccability. The defects of Portishead are their distinctive traits of a shadowy and reserved personality. All this is what made them perfect. The polaroids are for the glory times and here they immortalized moments of inspiration that would fade in the transformations to come. Placed amid the first two albums Glory Times testifies that the blues the group really had it. References and samples, the plucked bass of Serge Gainsbourg’s records, the low tide blues of Toy Box and Glory Box (Mudflap Mix), the noir turntable of Scorn, all their propulsive pushes just left behind, John Barry, Henry Mancini, Lalo Schifrin, the traffic lights of Weather Report.
Their peculiar Port Blues. (Solo) The Blues works with fairness and can take you elsewhere, it is empathetic but also unpleasant, in the burning traffic that burns in the scorching summer soaked with sweat that flows fat from the body or in a closed room in the shade in winter paralyzed by cold and snow with all your teeth clenched, in the pleasure under the skin listening to warm Soul, Jazz, Funk, Northern Soul records in cold city venues of Europe, surprising yourself thinking sublimated in the warmth inside those places, sweating, steam, kitchen smells, words, and mental flights and rain and smoke and London mists while outside there is frost.
Reggae in Liège and then going out into the night’s freeze.
Blues turns in a Dub City, A Funky Bass, A Turntable, A Sound Business.
The First Name in Food Service. Welcome to Portishead, Sometimes.

Chorus Two / BLUES. Blues is always good. It’s good for a microphone from the '50s, good for the guitar, for the bass, for the organ, for the drums, good inserted into a Juke-Box Wurlitzer, good resting among the full ashtrays, the empty whiskey and beer glasses, the emptied matchboxes on the wooden tables of a piano bar Baldwin. Blues is the mood, Blues are the notes, the color, the character.
Beyond the twelve bars you find Mephisto, you find yourself. And the [P] had that Blues.
Exit Through the Gift Shop, When They Drop The Bomb Who Will Stay Calm?
Funky of New York, Paris. Back to Mind. Funky Boutique.
Black Coffea & Street Blues Deconstruction. Portishead is managed by FRUIT.