Dummy

Dummy is a perfect record held to a single mood. It made the comedown into an entire aesthetic: spy-film samples and Beth Gibbons' voice suspended over Geoff Barrow's crackle and Adrian Utley's noir guitar. It carried trip-hop to a mass audience with every drop of its dread intact, and it launched a thousand lesser imitations along with a few genuinely good bands. The records above it cover wider emotional ground at the same quality. Within its one register it is flawless.

Heartbreak recorded as surveillance footage. Gibbons at the front, Barrow and Utley building tension underneath from vinyl crackle and guitar, and songs strong enough to survive the aesthetic they invented.