The Guardian profile: Geoff Barrow of Portishead

The Guardian profile: Geoff Barrow of Portishead

As a natural outsider world Health Organization learned early on to combine little beyond his instincts, Geoff Burial mound of Portishead is a classic exercise of a musical theater pioneer wHO has gone against the texture - only to feel the rest of the globe coming with him.He was max Born in Walton-in-Gordano, Summerset, only grew up in relation rigour in the small coastal town of Portishead, after which he named his ring.Portishead's 1994 debut, Blank, remains one of the landmark albums of the 1990s, selling 2m copies in Europe alone. Released against prevailing trends at the tallness of Britpop, the record album popularised what has been dubbed "trip-hop" or "the Bristol sound". A blend of slowed hip-hop grooves, Barrow's old skool scratching, soundtrack samples and (singer Beth Gibbons's) mournful, heartbreaking lyrics, Dummy has been wide copied simply ne'er equalled.










It was awarded the Mercury music prize in 1995 and Barrow received the respect of local peers Massive Onset and Tricky (whose classic 1995 debut, Maxinquaye, Wheelbarrow helped bring on) and the city's master Bristol sound pioneer, Patsy Jimmy Stewart of the Pop Radical, wHO sees Garden cart as musically "flying the skull and crossbones of the buccaneer custom" in a city that Portishead helped give as a "haven of the avant garde". However, neither success nor applaud has soothed Barrow's restless creative urges. He has said his only concern is making "interesting" music and he hates compartmentalization. "The whole trip-hop tag was meaninglessness," he once said, disowning the move with which he is c. H. Best known. "It was developed by people in London, and the mass in Bristol scarce had to redact up with it."Wheelbarrow has




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