Portishead: Third 2LP 45 RPM Vinyl

Sold out

Why you'll love it

This 2LP set is cut at 45 RPM and comes in a gatefold jacket, giving the album's huge, raw dynamics plenty of room. Third went top ten in several countries, was certified gold in the UK and turned up on many best-of-2008 lists.

This edition

2LP set
Cut at 45 RPM
Gatefold jacket
Download card included
Stereo mix

About the album

Portishead took eleven years to follow up their second album, and they used the time to tear up the trip-hop rulebook they had helped write. Geoff Barrow went to Australia, came back, produced The Coral, and then he, Adrian Utley and Beth Gibbons reconvened in Bristol to build something harsher, stranger and more thrilling.

"Silence" opens with a voice speaking in Portuguese and a pounding krautrock beat, "Machine Gun" is all drum-machine rattle and synths straight from a John Carpenter film, and "The Rip" turns from a fragile acoustic lullaby into a pulsing electronic glow. Barrow wrote "Magic Doors" back in 2003, and "Threads" closes the album in stormy fashion, with Gibbons' voice as haunting as ever.

In 2013 NME ranked it at No. 330 among the 500 greatest albums of all time. Eleven years is a long wait, but the band clearly used it wisely, which is more than we can say for the time we spent alphabetizing the trip-hop section.

Also at Kops: more Portishead on vinyl · browse Electronic