Thirty years have passed since Portishead’s Dummy, but perhaps even more remarkably, 22 since Out Of Season, Beth Gibbons’ visionary autumnal collaboration with Talk Talk’s Paul Webb (aka Rustin Man). So, what’s she been up to? It would be tempting to guess very little. The only music that has surfaced since 2002 was a typically bleak interpretation of Henryk Gorecki’s Symphony No.3, made with Polish film composer Krzysztof Penderecki in 2019. However, the emotional weight in these grooves would suggest she has been preoccupied with more weighty concerns. Lives Outgrown is a deeply personal record – 10 years in the making – conceived during a troubled period of restlessness and self-doubt, during which Gibbons experienced the loss of several people close to her.
This story is from the May 2024 edition of Record Collector.
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This story is from the May 2024 edition of Record Collector.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
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Paperback Blighters - The books every record collector should read.
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David Bowie is one of the most venerated musicians ever. But even he had his bad periods. For many, 1984 remains the nadir of his Phil Collins” phase; an artistic/sartonial/tonsorial disaster area. But was it really that awful? Forty years on, Matt Phillips explores Bowie's so-called annus horribilis.
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Someone needs to come and empty the bins behind the Lloyds Bank branch in Kingston-upon-Thames. It’s been raining and flattened cardboard slumps next to a flytipped air conditioning unit and a rusting clothes rack. There are two signs at head height on the red brick wall. One warns that you’ll be clamped if you park here; the other, a stainless-steel plaque, marks Nipper’s 100th birthday. Nipper, the dog at the heart of the HMV and RCA Victor logos, was a white terrier with chocolate brown ears, maybe a Jack Russell, Smooth Fox, or Bull Terrier, more likely a mix. This is his final resting place. He was buried under a mulberry tree but, you know, urban sprawl, progress, etc. The plaque was unveiled by the Chairman of HMV Stores on 15 August 1984, while Captain Sensible, Janice Long, and a Nipper doppelganger looked on. Round the corner, at HMV and Our Price, George Michael’s Careless Whisper was flying off the shelves, and every copy turned at 45 RPM.
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A BUNCH OF MUSICIANS - 45, COUNT 'EM! RHAPSODISE ABOUT THEIR FAVOURITE SINGLE
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