Portishead

Built from dusty samples, spy-film moods, crackling old records and Beth Gibbons's fragile, heartbroken voice, Dummy sounded like the soundtrack to a lost noir thriller.

Geoff Barrow, a studio tape operator who had assisted on Massive Attack's Blue Lines, looped Lalo Schifrin's 'The Danube Incident' into 'Sour Times' and 'Glory Box' around Isaac Hayes, while guitarist Adrian Utley added a jazz player's sense of space. The album won the Mercury Prize and helped define Bristol's trip-hop scene, a label the band disliked.

After a darker self-titled follow-up, more than ten years passed before Third, a harsh, unsettling set of pounding krautrock rhythms and buzzing synths.