Portishead working on new album

The group who drew up the trip hop blueprint, Portishead, are currently applying the finishing touches to a new studio album, which is likely to surface in the summer.

Despite having not been in the studio together since 1997, Geoff Barlow insists that himself and Beth Gibbons had always planned on reconvening.

“We’ve just had our heads down really, we’ve never actually broken up, or parted, or whatever,” he says. “So for us it just seems, even though we haven’t played for years, we still see each other and write – we just haven’t released a record for a long time.”

Notoriously gig shy, the duo made an über-rare live appearance last month when they joined fellow Bristolians Massive Attack, Robert Plant and The Coral for a Tsunami Aid fundraiser.

Incidentally, the last interview that Beth Gibbons ever gave to the Irish media can be found right here on hotpress.com