Interview: Portishead
“Dummy we did in a very short time, less than six months and we had it done. That album was coming from a different place; it was like a fresh new marriage. A lot of stuff has happened since then and a lot of ideas have been expended,” he confesses. “I heard something that Joe Strummer once said, ‘no input, no output’. You have to feed yourself. The nature of our band is that it is a slow process, but I think we’d all like it to be a bit faster.” Having put so much painstaking effort into making the music, Utley finds himself conversing with people like State and trying to sum it up in half an hour. It’s not something he particularly enjoys.
“As soon as you finish a record, you have to talk about it and it’s very difficult,” he says. “If you make an album with more than just yourself in mind, then you’re into compromise and that is a really good thing as well as a frustrating thing. Part of the frustration with our band is the compromise. That goes for the relationship between the three of us as well. It’s a good struggle, but that means that you can’t be objective about things afterwards, because you have taken on other people’s points of view, and a collective point of view that is 15 years old. You come out of making a record and a fairly intense creative period and you have to talk about it, when perhaps you’re not sure what you think yourself.”
What he really wants to do is stop talking and start playing again which, with a tour looming, is about to happen. Given his background, it’s unsurprising that this is Adrian’s favourite part of the process.
“When I play live, I get a new take on everything. I can open up the top of the box and have a look in and discover stuff that I never really knew about. I know that sounds weird and arty but actually it’s totally true. The difference is that Geoff doesn’t like to play live at all: he absolutely hates it. The sound we make live is so difficult to reproduce sometimes, we have to take great care with all the instruments. There’s nothing running off tape, we have to play it all, and that’s quite a challenge to reproduce through a big PA in a weird room. If you take a band like Coldplay, they’re instruments stay pretty much the same and their music fits into a stadium setting. For us, it’s fucking weird to do that. For Geoff, it’s a nightmare because he refuses to accept that the sound won’t be absolutely perfect.
Portishead is an amazing band, Innovative use of jazz samples, big drums, simple bass and decks n effects. Great piece of music.
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