Portico Quartet are four young musicians from South London who sound like nothing you’ve ever heard before. Living and playing together, they describe themselves as an indy band playing post-jazz and their unique sound has won them fans from Gilles Peterson to Radio 4 and Notion to BBC Music Magazine.
Their debut album, ‘Knee-Deep In The North Sea’ was Time Out’s Jazz, Folk and World music album of the year for 2007 and a Nationwide Mercury Prize album of the year for 2008.
Portico Quartet are Jack Wyllie (soprano saxophone), Milo Fitzpatrick (double bass), Nick Mulvey (hang and percussion) and Duncan Bellamy (drums and hang), and it’s the mix of ethereal saxophone, flying saucer-like hang (imagine an otherworldly steel drum), clattering drums and earthy double-bass that gives their music it’s inimitable, beautiful sound.
It was the chance purchase of the hang by Duncan Bellamy, at a music festival, that inspired the young friends to start a band, and while their largely intuitive music references jazz and African music it’s the hang inspired trance-like repetitive patterns of Duncan and Nick Mulvey that propel the band into stranger pastures: invoking Philip Glass and Steve Reich’s gamelan inspired minimalism.
Their dance friendly, melodic brand of hook-heavy post-jazz was honed whilst busking across Europe and playing in unusual spaces such as churches, galleries and chill-out zones. A weekly session at the South Bank and residency at the Brixton Ritzy earned them a cult following and inspired London’s hippest jazz club, the Vortex, to start a label to release their music. Sessions on XFM and Radio 1 followed and a storming set at the Glastonbury Festival had Q hailing their ‘danceable chamber jazz soundscapes’ that ‘should make them a Glasto fixture’.
Portico Quartet have recorded seven new tracks at Real World Studios for the B&W release, entitled Black and White Sessions.
Here, the band discuss each track:
1. Dawn Patrol
This was one of the first tracks ever created in the early days when the band first came together. Conceived out of a jam/improvisation, it stems from a bass groove which the rest of the ensemble slowly unravel a moody, brooding texture of disonant intervals and eastern scales. This idea was often used in our busking days to entice in the passers-by before launching into 'the real tunes'. However, from our own growing interest into this form of improvised playing we soon started to anchor down its core traits and redefined it into a more focused flow of ideas.
2. News From Verona pt.2
Like in much jazz music a recording is only a caption, a snapshot, of an idea which is forever unfolding. 'News From Verona' on our album Knee Deep in the North Sea, was an early snapshot from when the piece was conceived and so naturally we wanted explore it some more after the recording. After the main theme the band breaks down to a warm hang pad chord and the bass takes a bowed solo pentatonic line descending from very high to low, soon echoed by the Jack on the soprano. The end phrase then repeats and explodes into a jilting 11/8 groove with powerful chord changes from the Hang. A piece of two halves, each one connected absractly but flows with intrigue and interest.
3. Untitled
This is piece was recorded at something of an embryonic stage, an unfinished sketch if you will. We were exploring the sounds created by doubling up the hang and the marimba. The bass also joins these two on the leading motif. A change of key at the last quarter and a delicate finish.
4. The Full Catastrophe
Taking inspiration in title from a Zorba The Greek quote, this tune is a meditation on releasing a simple idea slowly and to powerful effect. The hang takes on a particularly static role (in fact it never changes, though indeed it does 'breathe') whilst the bowed bass and sax work as a unit, building in texture before the drums enter. The sax takes a wandering role after the melody is repeated twice, and is more textural than melodic as the intensity of the bass and drum part develop to climatic effect. Fun times.
5. Midnite Delite
This piece was conceived during a particularly stressful rehearsal. It begins with an improvised solo sax introduction, quickly breaking into the melody. The piece then works through a fairly simplistic structure, with the bulk of the tune being left open to improvise.
6. Johnson
This soft, delicate track utilises an ongoing fascination with double bass and hang working together.
7. November
An old track that has been reimagined in recent times. Jack takes a rather middle eastern approach to his improvisation.