Best known as a member of
Portishead, guitarist and producer
Adrian Utley has also recorded under various names and participated in several recorded and live collectives, such as the occasional This I Dig,
Stonephace, Adrian Utley & Mount Vernon Arts Lab, and
Adrian Utley's Guitar Orchestra.
Utley was originally a jazz guitarist, performing in organist
Big John Patton's touring band and also with a late edition of
Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers -- one of the few guitarists ever to do so.
In 1991 he met producer/engineer/musician
Geoff Barrow and singer
Beth Gibbons, and the three began writing together and became
Portishead. They enlisted a fourth member, engineer and drummer Dave MacDonald, and the group's debut album,
Dummy, appeared in 1994. They released a second, self-titled studio offering and the live
PNYC before going on hiatus in 1999.
Utley and his bandmates pursued individual projects. He produced
the Flanagan-Ingham Quartet's
Textile Lunch album in 2000, and played on and co-produced
Gibbons and
Paul Webb's (aka
Rustin Man) album Out of Season in 2002. That same year, he and
Barrow released a cover of the rock classic "Apache" as Jimi Entley Sound. The pair also took on the moniker Fuzzface to co-produce singer
Stephanie McKay's 2003 album, McKay. In 2005, they helmed the sessions for
the Coral's
Invisible Invasion album.
In 2005,
Portishead reconvened and contributed the track "Un Jour Comme un Autre (Requiem for Anna)" to the 2006
Serge Gainsbourg tribute album Monsieur Gainsbourg: Revisited. The group's next full-length,
Third, appeared in 2008. In 2009,
Utley collaborated with notable musicians
Larry Stabbins,
Jim Barr, Helm DeVegas, and DJ Krzysztof Oktalski as
Stonephace. The collective issued a self-titled genre-defying meld of jazz, world music, and electronica on
Tru Thoughts in 2009. In 2012,
Utley formed
Adrian Utley's Guitar Orchestra in order to perform
Terry Riley's 1964 minimalist masterpiece In C for special occasions. The group was composed of 24 musicians, including 19 guitarists (
Barr,
Thought Forms, and
John Parish included), four organs, and a bass clarinet. Their recorded version of the work appeared in October of 2013.