New Portishead in the Spring

Legendary trip-hoppers Portishead have set a release date of March 31, 2008 for their eagerly anticipated, as-yet-untitled third album, to be released through Island records. It will be their first collection of new material in more than a decade, following 1994’s Dummy and their 1997 self-titled album. The band’s most recent release was 1998’s Roseland NYC Live.

After completing the recording process last month, Portishead have spent the past few weeks mastering the new album. Multi-intsrumentalist and founding member Geoff Barrow had this to say in a recent post to the Portishead MySpace page: "We've had our meeting with the label it was really positive....which makes the whole thing so much easier to deal with nice people...The tracks are in a right mess but sounding like a album for the first time in years. They’re a bit weird though. Its great its nice to think us old gits have a few tunes in us without sounding like coffee table Zero 7 - Moby - chill out shit!"

In the downtime since their last album, singer Beth Gibbons released a solo album in 2002 with collaborator Rustin Man, entitled Out of Season.

From December 7-9, Portishead will also serve as curators at the All Tomorrow's Parties festival in Minehead, England. The festival will feature Aphex Twin, Autolux, Thurston Moore, Black Mountain, Ladytron and many others, as well as Portishead’s first full live performance in nearly 10 years.