Dummy
- Zone: Surface (level 1 of 5)
- Genre: Electronic, Trip-hop
- Mood: bleak, lonely, smoky
- Sound: slow breakbeats, turntable scratching, film-noir samples, theremin
Dummy took hip hop sampling methods and used them to make something colder and stranger. The band recorded their own music straight onto vinyl, then scratched and distressed the records and sampled them on decks, with some of the sound also run through a broken amplifier. Adrian Utley added theremin, cimbalom and Hammond organ to Geoff Barrow’s homemade breakbeats and Rhodes piano, and Beth Gibbons’ vocals sit over sparse, dusty arrangements in which silence plays a big part. Samples from Lalo Schifrin, Weather Report, Isaac Hayes and War are folded into it, but the source material is mostly the band’s own. It was recorded in Bristol and helped to popularise trip hop.
Track list
- Mysterons
- Sour Times
- Strangers
- It Could Be Sweet
- Wandering Star
- It’s a Fire
- Numb
- Roads
- Pedestal
- Biscuit
- Glory Box