Nightmare Before Christmas weekender in Minehead, not far from their Bristol base. Among them was ‘
Machine Gun’, a stripped-raw pulsation of electronic marching drums topped by typically ethereal vocals from Gibbons. As a sign of things to come, it was striking to hear – primitive but startlingly progressive, a distillation of facets experienced before but focused into a potency unexpected. Portishead had changed, period.
The band has had to change, though – such a significant time between albums must indicate stylistic shifts, displeasure with established norms, and so it proves to be as Barrow explains to DiS at a London hotel. We sit at a table, tall mugs of tea (which he made) before us; Barrow calls to the departing online PR: