Portishead on music, misogyny and debunking their own mystery

Its 20 years since the release of Dummy, Portisheads trip-hop masterpiece. To mark the anniversary, heres a classic interview from 1994 - originally published in the Independent on Sunday and lifted from Rocks Backpages

If you were the most compelling and enigmatic new group in Britain, playing your first proper gig in the sort of London club where Christine Keeler used to strut her stuff, and you found out that Michael Hutchence of INXS had just walked in, what would you do? Get your friends to throw him out, thats what. Him and his supermodel companion: let them chew pavement. Portishead dont do this, though thats not the kind of people they are (He was on Later with us, says musical mastermind Geoff Barrow, it was nice of him to come). May they never have cause to regret such forbearance.

The fake foliage hanging from the Eve Clubs ceiling gives it the air of a woodland glade. This is one of those gatherings in which the best one can hope for is to remain inconspicuous. That is exactly what Portishead try to do: standing around chatting while the DJ makes mellow, then melting out of the crowd and onto the cramped stage, performing a handful of songs from their superb debut album, Dummy, and merging modestly back into the throng again. Miraculously, given the complexity of their music and the fact that this (excepting two show-stopping tunes on Later and one brief showcase in a Clapham tearoom) is its first public airing, they sound even better in person than they do on record.

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by Ben Thomson via Electronic music | The Guardian