Dummy by Portishead (1994) — a VG+ original pressing is worth £30–£50. The pressing to own, and the case for № 74: Geoff Barrow, Beth Gibbons, and Adrian Utley invent trip-hop in a Bristol bedsit. Recorded onto two-inch tape and bounced through a turntable. Nobody dances; everybody listens.
Estimated market value of an original pressing of Dummy by Portishead, by sleeve and media condition on the Goldmine grading scale.
The pressing to look for: 1994 UK, Go! Beat 828 522-1 (first pressing). Catalogue number 828 522-1.
Researched market ranges for the original pressing; condition, completeness of inserts and pressing variant all move the figure. The Lead-In values every record against live marketplace data — value your own shelf for a current, condition-matched figure.
Eleven tracks in 49 minutes. Recorded across approximately ten months at Portishead's Coach House Studios in Bristol with Geoff Barrow and Adrian Utley producing. The Bristol trio's debut LP, Beth Gibbons's deliberately-restrained vocal over Barrow and Utley's deliberately-cinematic trip-hop production. The album that consolidated trip-hop as a commercial genre.
Eleven tracks in 49 minutes. Recorded across approximately ten months at Portishead's Coach House Studios in Bristol with Geoff Barrow and Adrian Utley producing. The Bristol trio's debut LP, Beth Gibbons's deliberately-restrained vocal over Barrow and Utley's deliberately-cinematic trip-hop production. The album that consolidated trip-hop as a commercial genre.
Portishead in spring 1994 was Beth Gibbons (vocals), Geoff Barrow (producer), and Adrian Utley (guitar/co-producer). Barrow had worked at Bristol's Coach House Studios with Massive Attack since 1991; Utley had been working as a jazz guitarist. The Bristol trip-hop scene that Massive Attack had inaugurated provided the album's specific local cultural context.
Recording extended approximately ten months at Coach House Studios. Barrow's working method was deliberately-controlled: he would build deliberately-cinematic sample-based production beds, then bring Beth Gibbons in for the vocal sessions.
The album consolidated trip-hop as a commercial genre. The deliberately-cinematic, deliberately-noir-influenced production approach combined with deliberately-restrained vocal delivery established the founding template for trip-hop. The Massive Attack-Portishead-Tricky 'Bristol sound' of the mid-1990s extends from Dummy.
Go! Beat released the album on August 22, 1994. The album peaked at UK #2 and US #79; BPI Platinum certification within a year; Mercury Prize winner in 1995.
Dummy belongs at #74 because it is the album that consolidated trip-hop as a commercial genre.
Original 1994 UK pressing on Go! Beat (distributed by Go! Discs), catalog 828 522-1, a single LP in a standard (non-gatefold) sleeve. The cleanest way to identify the UK original is the tracklist: it has ten tracks and does NOT include 'It's A Fire', which was inserted on later US, Australian and European pressings (catalog 828 553). Spine reads 'PORTISHEAD DUMMY 828 522-1 GO! BEAT'. The CD was the primary launch format, but the UK first-press LP is the collector's target.
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