No Mystery in Portishead : The British band, which is named for the small town near Bristol, is making its mark with distinctive ‘soundtracks without movies’

While setting up their gear for a recent concert at Hollywood’s American Legion Hall, Geoff Barrow and Adrian Utley of the British group Portishead are completely distracted by the white Camaro in the parking lot.

Worshipfully walking around the mid-’70s Chevy as if it were the Ark of the Covenant, the two note that the only place you’d see that kind of American muscle car in their English hometown of Bristol is on the screen at the cinema.

“Is this what Steve McQueen drove in ‘Bullitt’?” wonders guitarist Utley, at 37 the larger and older of this Mutt-and-Jeff pair.

“No,” replies Barrow, 24, the scruffy, scrawny studio Wunderkind behind the hypnotic sound of “Dummy,” the group’s 1994 debut album, one of the most bracing left-field hits of recent months. “That was a Mustang. This is what John Wayne drove in ‘McQ.’ ”

Utley looks up and nods as both exclaim in hushed, reverent tones: “Great soundtrack!”

That comment figures. Movie soundtracks are the fuel that powers Portishead’s music, a mix of James Bond and spaghetti Western atmospheres with a post-hip-hop sensibility, all topped by Beth Gibbons’ haunting, blues-cabaret vocals and tortured lyrics.

The surprise, though, is that Barrow and Utley actually saw the movies they were talking about.

“Most of the soundtracks I have, I’ve never seen the film,” says Barrow, sitting with Utley in a Hollywood hotel room before going to the Legion Hall. “I actually consider them just as experimental bits of music rather than something to go with a picture.”

Portishead’s music has in fact been described as soundtracks without movies, inspiring the coining of cinematically related terms, such as ambient-noir , which themselves denote a deep air of mystique.

Indeed, as the magnetically anguished song “Sour Times (Nobody Loves Me)” became a staple on both youth-oriented alternative-rock radio and adult-aimed pop outlets in recent months, questions about Portishead came faster than answers.

The biggest mystery is Gibbons, who is the center of attention in the songs but is virtually absent in the press. The singer, who hooked up with Barrow five years ago after stints in various Bristol pop-rock bands, did a few interviews around the time of the record’s release last fall, but she’s refused to participate since then. Attempts to engage her in conversation while the band is setting up at the Legion Hall are met with a warm, personable smile and utter silence.

Barrow insists that his partner’s reticence is simply a matter of extreme shyness. But he’s rather pleased that it leaves the group’s image somewhat nebulous.

“That’s cool,” he says. “To us it just comes down to the music. If people like it, they go out and buy it. Obviously you’ve got a right to be intrigued about the person who’s singing and all. But to us, we’re pretty boring. We go into the studio, make records and come home.”

And then there’s the group’s name, which puzzled Americans and amused Britons. Barrow laughs about that, explaining that there was, again, no mystery intended. It’s merely the name of the town where he grew up, a nondescript suburban village near Bristol.

But it was there that Barrow got his musical start as a teen when, inspired by the sonic collages behind many rap records, he taught himself to piece together homemade music samples in his bedroom.

At 18 he called a Bristol producer and was told he could have a job making tea for bands--but only if he first helped build a new studio. That facility, the Coach House, became the home of a rising crop of innovative Bristol artists, most notably the ambientdance production and performing team Massive Attack.

Barrow quickly graduated to more meaningful studio tasks, all the while experimenting with his own music, enlisting singing and songwriting help from Gibbons. A big break came in 1992 when Neneh Cherry, recording at the Coach House, commissioned Barrow to provide a track for a song on her “Homebrew” album (although he’s credited as Geoff Barlow ).

Word of his distinctive talents spread quickly, and soon Portishead--with Utley serving as guitarist and co-producer--was signed by the PolyGram-distributed Go! Discs label. The group deliberately took its time preparing “Dummy,” hoping to avoid the too-much-too-soon syndrome.

“We thought that maybe this album would sell 30,000 or 50,000 copies and then we would work on the next one and maybe have two or three albums before coming to America and doing concerts,” Barrow says.

The fact that here they are, already performing in Hollywood with “Dummy” having sold more than 375,000 copies, Barrow says, is proof that the plan didn’t quite work. But as long as they are in Hollywood, would they maybe want to knock on a few movie studio doors and offer their services for a real film soundtrack?

“I’d like to,” Barrow said. “But I don’t know if I’d be able to do it because you have to be able to work with people who may have different ideas about what you’re doing than you do. You listen to [big movie] soundtracks these days, and while some are good, most are not.”

A ctually, Portishead has done a real soundtrack, for its own 10-minute film “To Kill a Dead Man.” The political mini-thriller--reminiscent of Costa-Gavras’ “Z” (with Barrow as an assassin, Utley as his victim and Gibbons as the captive widow)--served to demonstrate the team’s sonic skills; some of its footage was frugally recycled for the “Sour Times” video.

But much to the group’s chagrin, it also provided a lingering visual image of Portishead.

“For some reason the press people in England gave out pictures of us from the film--so it’s kind of like ‘Hey, here’s Portishead, and they’re carrying guns and wearing dark shades,’ ” Barrow says. “And it was like ‘Ah! No!’ That’s not why we did it!’

“We came out with the film because we were able to write a 10-minute soundtrack on our own terms,” he explains. “We don’t consider ourselves actors in any way. For us it’s highly embarrassing.”

Utley emphatically agrees but--a soundtrack fan to the end--adds: “I like the music, though.”