Portishead Ready to Start On New Album by Sarah Maple

It may have taken Portishead over ten years to follow-up their last record with the recent 'Third' but that does not, as Geoff Barrows told online radio station Xfm, means they're going to wait around that long for the next one.
Having just finished their recent comeback tour after a decade-long hiatus, Portishead are raring to get going on their next projects.

"It's time for us now to stop, regroup and make another record", Barrows told Xfm, adding that the band wouldn't be playing any more live dates this year.

"It certainly won't be another ten years until our next album, I'd be 142 years old!" he continued.

"As long as it still feels right and we still want to work together and we're all getting out of it want we need to be creatively happy, then yeah, I don't see why we wouldn't keep going now. We need to sit down, we haven't done that properly for nearly a year."

It's not just Portishead that the band are focusing on thanks to a heap of solo projects also on the go:

"Beth has just finished a soundtrack for a film, Adrian [Utley] has got his own projects too and I'm doing a hip hop project called Quakers, which is a load of mates online just chucking stuff at stuff...I really wanted to make a hip hop record before I'm forty!"

Turning to their next single, 'The Rip', (which as always, Beth Gibbons wrote the lyrics for) Barrows admitted he couldn't really shed much light as to what it's about:

"From working with Beth so long you can take what she says on so many levels. I see a personal level and a human, worldwide level. When she talks about herself I wonder if she's talking about her frustrations with the whole human race - the inability to communicate properly, human conditioning.

"'The Rip' was called 'The Mystic' orginally but I suggested 'The Rip' as a name because its one of those things in the sea which can suck you under if there's a strong current."

Portishead's next single 'The Rip' is out on June 9.

Their current album 'Third' is out now.