DOWNTEMPO TRIP-HOP

First of all…..when you haven’t heard such a great song in gawd knows home many years as it hasn’t come up on random shuffle on the i-pod and you think to yourself….wow!

mp3 : Portishead – Glory Box (single edit)

Secondly…..there is no way that 20 years have flown by since this was in the UK charts. Nooo Waaay.

Sour Times in August 1994 had brought Portishead to the attention of the record-buying public but parent album Dummy had been a bit of a slow-burner albeit it was high in all the critics end-of-year appraisals. The decision to edit down the closing track of the album for release as a 45 at the start of the following year was a stroke of genius and Dummy was soon selling in much bigger quantities and in the Top 20. I really thought Glory Box had been a Top 5 hit but looking back with the use of t’internet reveals it stuck at #13, the same spot as Sour Times some five months previous.

The three other tracks on the CD single are a variation on a theme and well worth a listen:-

mp3 : Portishead – Toy Box
mp3 : Portishead – Scorn
mp3 : Portishead – Sheared Box

Oh and for completeness, here’s the full 5 minute plus version that closes out the LP:-

mp3 : Portishead – Glory Box

The main sample in the song is an Isaac Hayes track called Ike’s Rap II. Later the same year, the sample again hit the UK charts, this time at #12:-

mp3 : Tricky – Hell Is Round The Corner (original mix)
mp3 : Tricky – Hell Is Round The Corner (the Hell’n’Water mix)

Sublime.