Dummy

Geoff Barrow made beats from scratched vinyl and old film soundtracks; Beth Gibbons sang over them like a singer from a 1960s nightclub that has since burned down. They named the band after a seaside town near Bristol and called the album Dummy. It won the Mercury Prize and helped define what got called trip-hop, a term Portishead always hated. The sound is jazz, hip-hop, and spy-movie strings, all dragged down to a crawl.