My Favourite Record is a weekly feature where we ask musicians we rate from across the spectrum to pick their most cherished — a development of our occasional On Record feature, and a chance to take a peek at the albums that maketh the artist. Today’s entry:

PORTISHEAD
Portishead
(Go!/London, 1997)

Picked by: Dancefloor legend DJ Zinc.

I don’t know about my favourite record — there are so many albums I love from start to finish — so it’s more like “pick one out of a hat.” So I did and the result is Portishead by Portishead.

I came across this LP en route to Australia, and had never heard of Portishead. For the previous 10 years or so I had only listened to acid house and what it had progressed into: jungle and drum & bass — I didn’t want to listen to anything else. Anyway, I was walking past a record shop, heard them playing ‘Only You’, stopped in my tracks and went in and bought the album.

It was like a film soundtrack for something bleak but with this fragile beauty. Dusty breaks, samples, loads of Echoplex and vocals that sounded so strange: an antidote to generic pop. I loved the way some of the elements were slightly out of time, sample and drum machine based music can get quite rigid, but this seemed more alive.

Earlier this year, Zinc released ‘Show Me’ via Rinse. The station is currently celebrating its 20th year with the help of Boxfresh.