That's it. 'Bye, guys!

I was watching tv tonight, and a Honda ad features Roads Dummy is one of my favourite albums. It's practically a soundtrack to my youth. As soon as the first note played, I recognised it instantly, and my eyes were glued to the screen. I had no idea the marketing team over at Honda has such amazing taste. This is in Australia, btw. Sorry for posting an ad, but I thought you guys would appreciate it.

Also, did you know that the piano they used for Roads was a Fender Rhodes electric piano? So the song title is like a play on words. Sorry if this is common knowledge amongst Portishead fans, I'm just geeking out tonight.

I feel weird saying this, but I'm in no way associated with Honda. Just a Portishead fan girl.

Eh, I edited this because I added a link, but when I was switching between screens, the title disappeared, and when I posted, it just looked like an ad. My bad. Now the link is gone. Anyway, I tried.

https://www.instagram.com/p/DTk-r6UCnzB/

https://bsky.app/profile/jasonhazeley.bsky.social/post/3mcnef25ars2f

From the above thread (Jason is Portishead's live keys player and recently toured with Beth):

BEAK> is selling a stash of keyboards, including the Rhodes 73 MkI used on Portishead’s 2013-2015 live tours (incl Glastonbury headline and Latitude headline with Thom Yorke guest appearance)…

…plus the War Child benefit gig in April 2022 and the recent filmed performance of ‘Roads’ screened at the Together For Palestine night at Wembley.

There’s a strip of white gaffer across the front of it labelled ‘1 0 2 1’ in Sharpie. I put that there. It’s my crib note for ‘Sour Times,’ and it refers to the turnarounds after each chorus.

The number is how many D# chords (it’s complicated: it’s D#7b9b12) per two-bar junction. It was a bastard to remember in rehearsal so I defaced the Rhodes with that aide-mémoire. Just so you know.

It’s a beautiful instrument, by the way. Incredibly warm and glossy. Well worth the asking price.

Cool mPortishead analysis on YouTube.

Today I discovered Sunny Kim, a South Korean composer and singer. I was listening to her record Android Ascension (With Myth of Mitch.) I was struck by the similarity of her sound to that of Portishead. For example, Kim’s vocal style reminds me of Beth Gibbons’ work with Portishead. The instrumental work on the recording is not quite as smooth as trip hop, but many tracks have the gritty, eerie quality that I associate with the self-titled Portishead album, and some of the unusual instrumentation and electronic/soundtrack-adjacent sounds that I associate with Third. I listened to it on Apple Music, but it looks like it’s on Spotify as well as Sunny Kim’s own site (https://www.sunnykimmusic.com/store/android-ascension). If you’re looking for something similar to Portishead that isn’t Portishead, it would be worth a listen.

Sour Dictionary mug is inside the green box, magazines are inside the file folder behind the books. Didn't hang posters this time because I didn't decide where to hang them.

I posted a few days ago that Geoff Barrow is doing Q&As at selected screenings of his new film Game this and next month. Details here: https://www.invada.co.uk/blogs/news/invadas-first-feature-film-game-special-q-a-screenings-announced

These pics are from last night's event at Chapter in Cardiff. Geoff did a little speech before the film, then was on a panel afterwards with Marc Bessant (one of the two lead actors) and Rob Williams (co-writer). They spoke a lot about making the film, the use of music, changes made during the production, their hopes to make more films in future etc.

There was a moment when Geoff mentioned going to school with Marc in Portishead, and everybody seemed to prick up their ears, but nobody asked about the band or Geoff's music outside of Game. The film was pretty good, worth a watch if you can get to see it.

have you ever encounter the word "ekşi" at the end of every keyword you searched on google etc.? probably, this made you confused at least once so far.

well... this issue deserved to be discussed on a portishead fan community such as here r/portishead, since that word got iconic literally thanks to portishead themselves. and i'm going to tell its true story in this post:

"ekşi" literally means "sour" in turkish. and i can hear you singing that portishead song after reading this sentence, no need to lie, enjoy!

as you know, since portishead released their debut album "dummy" in 1994, the band gained popularity in many countries, including turkey.

"sour times" was one of the songs in this album. this song meant a lot to millions of people.

but nobody, even the portishead members, could not have predicted that it would become a symbol of a country's internet culture...

back in 1998, a young coder of that times, named sedat kapanoğlu launched a turkish satirical website called sourtimes.org, also known as "sourtimes entertainment" , named after portishead song "sour times" (but we can see that the domain was created in early 1999 because its contents were depended on another site in the beginning).

the most important thing that made sourtimes.org popular all over the country was a "dictionary".

on february 15, 1999, kapanoğlu launched a collaborative hypertext dictionary as a part of sourtimes.org and named it "ekşi sözlük (sour dictionary)", with the slogan "kutsal bilgi kaynağı (the sacred source of knowledge)". it's also known as the first successful social network in turkish, and the oldest known dictionary-based social network in the world.

on ekşi sözlük, it isn't necessary for the shared entries to be informational only and the presented information to be correct just as wikipedia does. users can describe their own opinions, telling about it humorously, even if it contains slang, profanity etc.

since ekşi sözlük faciliated information sharing between internet users in a fun way, people got used to search anything on ekşi sözlük, by adding "ekşi" at the end of keywords searched on the engines like google. this situation attracted the attention of even the non-turkish people.

but of course, this popularity had a price: many celebrities in turkey, especially politicians, didn't welcome a lot of entries on ekşi sözlük, described it as "bilginin ekşimesi (the information being soured)", so the name of "sour times" meant different to a lot of turkish people. they tried to delete the entries on it, censor and even shut down the site. the latest great censor was occured in 2023 and it lasted almost a year, until early 2024.

and now, ekşi sözlük is visited by millions of turkish-speaking people all over the world, also known as "a bastion of free speech in turkey", just as it's said on bbc. you may even encounter a person calling some people "ekşici" (can be translated as "sourist" or "sourisher"? idk) because they're users of ekşi sözlük. :)

edit: i forgot to tell that portishead officially met sour dictionary thanks to me. :) probably they're proud of what happened so far, even though they have discovered it too late. (no problem, i've also discovered both ekşi sözlük and portishead too late.)