Dinner music: Portishead - Dummy

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Dinner music: Today it's Dummy by Portishead. 

I remember hearing this for the first time in about '95, hungover and broken the morning after a big night out. As I immersed myself in the soft cushions of a friend's sofa I found a copy of this CD balancing precariously on the arm of the chair. I placed it into the drawer of the CD player and settled back into my cushion-nest.
My beer-fear-addled brain was not ready for what was to come next. 
Eerie trip-hop music filled my ears for the first time, and the small dark pockets of post-excess-anxiety spiked. I almost turned it off as it didn't hit the indie vibe I was used to, but something kept me hanging on for each song. Its strangeness was jangling my nerve endings like a strung-out Spiderman, but something was calming and comforting underneath. 
The album built steadily to the epic Glory Box, and I felt changed. 
I bought a copy the next day, and it became a constant companion and recovery tool for the excesses of the 90s and 00s. 
To my children, it will always be Daddy's old weird music, but to me, it has been a life raft.

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