It’s a busy time for Geoff Barrow, what with his Quakers hip-hop project, his planned Drokk soundtrack work and of course exciting new material from Beak>, all of which you can hear here.
Nevertheless, when we spoke to Barrow last month he said that we could also expect Portishead to begin work on their fourth album at some point soon. "We’ve been getting together recently and talking about lots of stuff," he said. "There’s definitely going to be another record, we’re just going to get on it as soon as my studio gets working."
According to Barrow, the experience of playing new countries and returning to old ones they’d not visited in years was a positive one, but now it’s time to move on. "It inspired us because people were into it, but in terms of where it takes us musically, it inspired us because that’s where it stops," Barrow says. "That tour was almost a continuation of the ATP we did in 2007, 2008, it was the same band, pretty much the same set, lots of Third and lots of bits of other stuff, so now we want to move forward."
Barrow adds that he increasingly finds constant activity a motivational force: "We’ve not got anything at all down, but for me doing things like Drop and Beak> and Anika and lots of other things I’ve got my finger in has made me realise that that’s the way forward for me, just to keep on making music, so I don’t stop, so it doesn’t become an issue. I can just carry on writing, get the momentum going – that’s what everyone wants really, to feel able."
Does this help you avoid the infamous pauses between albums that so obsessed journalists when they wrote about Portishead? "In stagnant periods you just can’t face writing anything and you think ‘why don’t I just clean out my shed’. Massive avoidance."
And then that’s all anyone wants to write about! "Well it does help. I think if we were around every six months, people would go ‘Huh, bloody Portishead again’."
