Articles Part VII: Portico Quartet

Currently in limbo, the only way to retain normality is to continue writing about my own writing. Well meta. Here's the seventh article I was most proud of from last year.
With the re-release of their fantastic second album, Isla, last year Portico Quartet deserved a second shot at wider acclaim. Their instrumental, resonating ambient-flecked jazz suits a certain mood - partially melancholy but hopeful anyway. The perfect antidote to overly skronky or intricate meanderings, their sound is built around one instrument - one that you'd be forgiven for thinking was unnecessary in any other place. But within their context, it more than makes sense - it's almost the instrument's entire purpose. And how many musical groups are capable of that?


Portico Quartet

Rarely do we find an artist’s entire output inspired by and reliant on a fairly unfamiliar instrument. Joanna Newsom’s harp is perhaps the only exception we can think of here. The East London-based Portico Quartet are not only one of those rarities but an astonishing discovery in their own right as well. The band’s second album Isla, released in autumn last year, is an exceptional work bereft of cliché and imbued with an exceptional command of jazz and ‘world’ music instruments to craft a gripping, gooseflesh-inducing sound.
The story itself is a suitably heartening one. Nick Mulvey discovered the hang at the WOMAD music festival. “I heard the sound first and saw a crowd of people and just loved the sound of it. It wasn’t like anything I’d heard before. Very quickly I forced my way to the front of the queue and had a go and found that I could play it, not because of any particular gift, but it’s a very intuitive instrument so I could play it instantly.” This rudimentary-looking pitted steel UFO is a Swiss made alien object, with a bewitching sound. Portico Quartet’s elegant yet riveting soundscapes are formed from the simple sculpted steel drum noise through which treated saxophone and double bass swarm and penetrate.
“I’ll put a hang pattern together that has a nice pocket of space and then maybe an inherent tension like it’s asking a question. Then Duncan (Bellamy – drummer) locks in very quickly just using the bell of his hi hat and I know already this is going to go somewhere because we’re already making a nice sound and he’s only using a fraction of his kit, he’s still got all the rest to play yet. Milo (Fitzpatrick – double bass) might have a little lick on the bass and if it catches very quickly we all slot into place around it and usually a groove forms and we’re all jamming on the groove and then we’d then sculpt a tune out of it, pull stuff back and Jack Wylie (saxophone) will find a melody. The second album was largely how can we push beyond this method. Part of the thing is we think textually rather than develop the harmonies like a jazz pianist might, it’s about textures and sound worlds.”

Their balance of composition and improvisation leads not only to incredible studio takes but sophisticated, sensual and haunting live deviations. It was this other worldly sound which brought them from casual busking as students to playing a sold out Barbican in London back in March.
“We’d had one jam in our student halls of residence and everyone, all the students hanging around were like ‘that’s wicked’ so we thought ‘fuck it let’s go down Southbank’ and the response was really overwhelming and we made £300 in a couple of hours. The next Saturday we made more and a festival promoter from Italy walked past and loved it. We started to meet people in the media who were walking down and our repertoire began to solidify, so it was just became a good place to play. I think after the first week we invested one months earnings into an industrial CD burner, went to a mates private studio, recorded four or five of the first tracks and then printed up about 100 copies. We went to the Southbank the next day and shifted all of them for a fiver. Next week we did 200 copies and suddenly we’re making a grand a weekend for five hours work. So we quit all our bar jobs and we were making much better money much easier playing the music we really love. The whole thing, in a way, encouraged itself. We never had any intention. We feel really lucky about it.”

From these humble beginnings, three or four years later, Portico Quartet are working with renowned producer John Leckie. Far from the Muse and Radiohead records he’s known for, Leckie has worked with a huge amount of different music (the India Soundpad project covered by PMP last year for instance). He contacted the band’s new record label Real World, owned by Peter Gabriel, after he heard them play the Mercury Music Prize ceremony for which their debut Knee Deep In The North Sea was nominated. On the same week John contacted Real World, Real World were attempting to contact him for the same reason.
“Having the rock background was really useful for us because we wanted a slightly more muscular sound on the second album,” explains Nick. “We wanted someone who had made a hundred second albums and wasn’t 25 years old and not someone who would interfere in our process too much or at all because we know what we want to do musically.” John Leckie turned out to be the perfect choice.
The proof is contained on Isla, which captures the scintillating results of hard work, inspiration and creativity. In following nothing other than their love of music, Portico Quartet have stumbled upon that remarkably elusive tryst which blossoms from unexpected meeting to rewarding romance. Listening is all it takes to hear why.

Brad Barrett