Adrian Utley

From HitStory, the pop encyclopedia of School of Rock · Artist

Adrian Utley is an English guitarist, composer and producer, born in 1957 in Northampton. In the mid-1980s he moved to Bristol. He was mad about jazz and played guitar in the band of Big John Patton and with Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers. He collected old instruments and studio equipment and began to concentrate on production and film work. Besides guitar he plays bass, piano and Moog synthesizer, and writes arrangements for brass and strings.

Music and breakthrough

He is best known as a member of Portishead, the Bristol band that began in 1990. The debut Dummy appeared in 1994, followed by Portishead in 1997 and Third in 2008. In the years between the second and third records Utley produced Out of Season by Beth Gibbons and Rustin' Man and worked with Geoff Barrow as Jimi Entley Sound and Fuzzface. He also recorded with Jeff Beck, Marianne Faithfull and Perfume Genius.

Influence

Utley also wrote film music. In 2010, together with Will Gregory of Goldfrapp, he made a new soundtrack for the silent film The Passion of Joan of Arc, performed by an orchestra of 23 musicians. In 2013 he played Terry Riley's In C with an ensemble of four organs and nineteen guitars. In this way he brought together the jazz of his youth and the dark, cinematic atmosphere of trip hop, and showed how broadly a guitarist can think.

Listening

Discography

Studio albums

• 2018Arcadia (Music From the Motion Picture) (soundtrack)
• 2024Spiralis Aurea Trio

In School of Rock

The chapters, maps and magazine stories of School of Rock are currently available in Dutch only.

• After Hours: Session 4^NL Reader