Third

Made in three Bristol rooms: Gibbons's home studio with a vintage Trident desk, Barrow's State of Art, and Utley's top-floor studio in a Georgian townhouse, with a drum room in the attic. Tracks moved between them and were often shelved for years. Silence opens with a recreated recitation in Portuguese by the capoeira master Claudio Campos, and Barrow said frustration made up nine-tenths of the record.

It drew a Metacritic score of 85. The Guardian gave it five stars while finding it, at first, easier to admire than to love. It topped PopMatters' list for 2008, came second on Pitchfork's, and in 2019 the Guardian ranked it 45th among the best albums of the century.