Portishead have revealed that they’re about to begin recording their fourth album.

Speaking to BBC 6Music, the band’s Adrian Utley said: “We’re just finishing up some projects we’ve each got and then we’ll look to start writing, a little bit separately and then together but it is pretty exciting. I think we’re just gearing up to it, staring at each other a bit and getting ready to go.”

“We’ve definitely thought about it and have had discussions about where we’re going and stuff, but it’s kind of early days and I don’t think any of us want to really hex it by putting too many rules on it, which we often do. I think we’ll just start puking up stuff and see what it sounds like.”

“I think it will feed into what we’re writing and how we feel about ourselves,” he said of the band’s upcoming live 2011 live shows, including a headline set at the Benicassim festival in Spain and two shows at the ATP I’ll Be Your Mirror weekender that they’re curating. “This is making it different, we’ll be playing live shows around it that might have a good influence on it, I’m hoping that it does, I’m quite excited about the whole thing.”

“We tend to disappear into a studio for a long long time and sometimes it can get pretty dark which in a way is a part of the creative process, it’s part of what makes us make the music we do, the kind of world we create around us.”