Product Details

* Audio CD (October 17, 1994)
* Original Release Date: October 18, 1994
* Number of Discs: 1
* Label: Polygram Records
* Catalog Number: 828553
* ASIN: B000001FI7
* Other Editions: Audio Cassette | LP Record
* Average Customer Review: based on 240 reviews. (Write a review.)
* Amazon.com Sales Rank: #748 in Music (See Top Sellers in Music)
Yesterday: #1,112 in Music

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1. Mysterons Listen Listen
2. Sour Times Listen Listen
3. Strangers Listen Listen
4. It Could Be Sweet Listen Listen
5. Wandering Star Listen Listen
6. It's A Fire Listen Listen
7. Numb Listen Listen
8. Roads Listen Listen
9. Pedestal Listen Listen
10. Biscuit Listen Listen
11. Glory Box Listen Listen
Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
The collaboration of studio whiz Geoff Barrow and singer Beth Gibbons, Dummy was made at the same time as a short film noir called "To Kill a Dead Man," and the same approach--gloomy, tormented, and wildly melodramatic--permeates the album. "Sour Times" (the hit in which Gibbons cries, again and again, "Nobody loves me, it's true") and the more cryptic "Glory Box" are the linchpins of the album, defining its sound: dark flashes of old soul and film music, dehumanized electronic bleeps, Gibbons emoting like she's consumed by shame, and a bass-and-beat pulse derived from the slow bump and grind of the Bristol scene that spawned Barrow's old collaborators, Massive Attack. --Douglas Wolk
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First tag: trip hop (Stefhen T. Hovland on Nov 17, 2005)
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37 of 37 people found the following review helpful:
Coldly Sensual and Smoothly Retro Memories, June 14, 2000
Reviewer: "liquidink" (St. Louis, Missouri) - See all my reviews
This is definitely another five-star item from me. Every time I listen to it, no matter how long it's sat in my CD shelf (forgotten, but only temporarily and never for too long), I am constantly surprised by how great it is...ahh the joy of "rediscovering" a favorite.

Dark and moody, much of the album sounds like a memory...of a place you've been once, or a movie you saw, or music you heard as you drove by an open window or door late one night in the city. Some of it is incredibly sexy (like "Numb," "Pedestal," and the awesome "Glory Box"), other parts are mournful (like "Biscuit," "Sour Times," "It's a Fire," and "It Could Be Sweet"), and still more are mysterious or just plain funky ("Mysterions" and "Strangers").

It's really hard to pick a favorite song on this album...almost all of them perfectly fit different moods I have at different times. They seem to encompass an incredibly vast range of modern urban sensitivities. "Sour Times" is, of course, wonderfully reminiscent of a moody classic spy flick while a song like "Strangers" bounces back and forth between an intense, pulsing beat like a walk through the club district of a large city and gentle, delicate interludes like the dawn over the Sea of Japan.

My least favorite is "Wandering Star," which I think is a bit too repetative, but even that I'm willing to listen to without much complaint.

Smoothly sexy, definitely modern, and particularly urban, *Dummy* is a classic and well worth your time and money.

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32 of 34 people found the following review helpful:
Review from an extrip-hop nut, August 29, 2003
Reviewer: Matthew Gross (Nanuet, NY United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)
I am a recovering trip-hop addict. For about a 4 years I ate up just about anything with the words trip-hop or downbeat attached to it. Sure there was a lot of quality albums there from groups like Massive Attack, Portishead, and the first Tricky album, but there was also a lot of [stuff] like the Sneaker Pimps and every other Tricky album. Now I know better. Just because somethings slow and dark doesn't necessarily mean its brilliant.

Portishead is different though. Beth Gibbons backs up the dark music and lyrical gloom with the most beuatifully raspy alto I've ever heard. There are more samples than I can possibly count but they all seem to blend together so tightly that you could swear that this album was recorded by studio musicians (I meant that as a compliment). Theyre self titled album is great too, but i dont think that it or any other album in the genre could ever surpass Dummy. ( )