Charlie Creates Sounds

Portishead’s ‘Dummy’ was cited in class as an essential work in the Trip-Hop genre. This year, fourteen years after they debuted with ‘Dummy’, Portishead released ‘Third’, their third album. Many critics at the time (see Paste Magazie, Pitchforkmedia etc.) saw this album as a clear break from the dated sound of Trip-Hop. But, as you can hear in the linked song, Portishead haven’t moved on from Trip-Hop, they’ve simply updated it.

‘Machine Gun’ leaves the turntable scratches and movie samples and lo-fi granularism in the nineties. But it keeps the clicking snares and ticking hi-hats. It continues to stand at the border of industrial, hip-hop, and jazz. And, being Portishead, the atmosphere remains as dark as it ever has.