Adrian Utley
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Adrian Utley (born April 27, 1957) is a jazz guitarist from Bristol, England who is most widely known for his musical direction, guitar work and production of the trip hop band Portishead. Before collaborating with Geoff Barrow and Beth Gibbons in Portishead, Utley dedicated a large portion of his musical career to jazz, having been greatly influenced by Miles Davis, John Coltrane and Elvin Jones, but his musical interests were never strictly limited to jazz, as he is noted to also have been influenced by Jimi Hendrix, Stevie Wonder, Ennio Morricone, Mick Ronson, Herbie Hancock, Howlin Wolf, A Tribe Called Quest, Public Enemy, Radiohead, The Beatles, Nirvana, Ravi Shankar, Gustav Mahler, Muddy Waters, Claude Debussy, Wes Montgomery, and Joy Division[1]. Utley not only excels at guitar, but also bass, piano, moog synthesizer and horn and string arrangements. Utley has also done work in production with Barrow, producing Portishead as well as the Coral's third album The Invisible Invasion.
In the mid 1980s he led Bath-based band The Glee Club. They released a single, "Let My People Twist/Gleebop". In 1991 he wrote the music for a short film, "Sort of Champion" directed by Rick Holbrook and Hazel Grian, in which he also had a small part. The music was performed by The Adrian Utley Quartet (Adrian Utley, Tony Orrell, Dave Goodier, John Bagott and Will Gregory).
After a successful but unfulfilling career in jazz, Utley found himself frustrated with the lack of evolution of the jazz world, and interested in hip hop and the new "Bristol Sound" evolving in the area around Bristol. Utley met up with Barrow around this time and together, along with vocalist Beth Gibbons, they created Portishead. Although Utley contributes a great amount to the band writing and producing the music, Portishead's label, Go!Beat, does not recognize Utley as a member of the band and continues to contract only Barrow and Gibbons [2]
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