Portico Quartet - Monument (November 2021 Gondwana Records)

Portico Quartet announce Monument, the electronic driven follow-up to their acclaimed ambient-minimalist suite Terrain, presenting the band at their most direct.

It's rare that a band releases two albums within six months of each other, rarer too that while both are so different, they are both as epochal in terms of the band's output as Terrain and Monument are to Portico Quartet. The irony is that Monument, a stripped-back, intentionally direct album, was the album that the band set out to write in May 2020, before the dream like long-form Terrain came into focus. Briefly they were two halves of the same record, but the band ended up developing these two distinct bodies of work concurrently. And although they were written side-by-side and recorded at the same sessions, they are records best understood as distinct from each other, each with opposing ideas and forms.

Monument is one of Portico Quartet's most accessible, direct records to date. If Terrain addressed the darker side of how Duncan Bellamy and Jack Wyllie made sense of the pandemic, then Monument resonates as an ode to better times. If not quite a dance record, it nonetheless pulses with an energy, radiance and a scalpel sharp focus. Jack Wyllie explains: "It's possibly our most direct album to date. It's melodic, structured and there's an economy to it that is very efficient. There's not much searching or wastage within the music itself, it is all finalised ideas, precisely sculpted and presented as a polished artefact."

Bellamy expands "Monument sits somewhere between our albums Portico Quartet and Art in the Age of Automation. It has perhaps a more overtly electronic edge to its sound – there are more synthesisers and electronic elements than we have used before and the music is often streamlined and rhythmic".

After the ethereal, stage-setting of Opening, the album kicks into overdrive with Impressions, a short energetic track that pairs a club influenced groove with hang drum and close, delicate saxophone. It's the balance between these elements that push and pull the track through a selection of melodic and rhythmic re-configurations, contrasting human touch with a machine-like focus. Ultraviolet is a kaleidoscopic, krautrock inspired track with a haunting introduction and an insistent pulse. The wistful Ever Present builds from a simple piano refrain; a nostalgic melody line floats over the top as drums and bass groove insistently underneath, before reaching a euphoric peak. The title track Monument builds around a looping vocal sample, drums and an enigmatic melody, the ending giving way to a gauzy, weaving synth line. The power here is in its economy and luminosity. AOE flips back and forth, like a dial that's been switched. Mining the tension between a pastoral inflected cello and saxophone melody, with an abrupt shift to jilted live drums, wailing delayed saxophone and a flickering synth line. Warm Data comes straight from the same Portico Quartet tradition as older tracks like Current History and Laker-Boo. It's a marriage of instrumental minimalism with drum machines and synths. Finally, the album closes with On The Light, a track that transmits a sense of suspense and freedom, driven by the twitching drums of Bellamy and evocative sax of Wyllie. It offers the perfect bitter-sweet and evocative ending to Portico Quartet's latest Monument.

1. Opening 02:50

2. Impressions 03:44

3. Ultraviolet 05:12

4. Ever Present 04:48

5. Gateway 01:14

6. Monument 04:40

7. A.O.E 05:35

8. Warm Data 08:16

9. Portal 01:09

10. On the Light 06:28

Mastered by John Davis at Metropolis. Artwork by Duncan Bellamy for Veils Project.

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PREORDER

Portico Quartet - Terrain (May 28, 2021 Gondwana Records)

Portico Quartet announce Terrain, a three-part suite drawing on American minimalism and ambient music alongside their own rich heritage as they explore new musical vistas

When Duncan Bellamy and Jack Wyllie – the driving force behind Portico Quartet got together in their East London studio in May 2020 and started work on the music that would become their new album, the world, or most of it, was in the midst of the first lockdown. The unique impact of the events of 2020 became the backdrop to their time composing and recording; causing them to take stock, re-think, and plot a new musical path.

Indian novelist Arundhati Roy expressed the sense of grief and rupture from the pandemic as "a portal, a gateway between one world and the next", and as they created the music that would become Terrain they were drawn towards longer, slowly unfolding pieces, which are perhaps the most artistically free and also the most beautiful they have ever made.

These are compositions more in the lineage of Line and Shed Song (Isla/2009), Rubidium (Portico Quartet/2012) and Immediately Visible (Memory Streams/2019). Wyllie expands: "We've always had this side of the band in some form. The core of it is having a repeated pattern, around which other parts move in and out, and start to form a narrative. We used to do longer improvisations not dissimilar to this around the time of our second record Isla.

On Terrain we've really dug into it and explored that form. I suppose there are obvious influences such as American minimalism, but I was particularly inspired by the work of Japanese composer Midori Takada. Her approach, particularly on 'Through the Looking Glass', where she moves through different worlds incorporating elements of minimalism with non-Western instruments and melodies were at the front of my mind when writing this music".

Terrain I, II & III are all subtly different, but a short rhythmic motif that repeats is the starting point in all three movements. There is a sense of a shared journey to all these pieces, they move through different worlds, with a sense of horizontal movement that lends the music real momentum. Terrain I was the first piece they worked on and it started with a hang drum pattern, improvised by Bellamy, who added cymbals and synthesiser. From there on it grew, Wyllie adding saxophone, another synthesiser section, strings. For Bellamy "It felt more like filmmaking than music making, a bricolage of conflicting, shifting signs, subtle tension and multiple narratives.

Andrei Tarkovsky's 'Mirror' and British artist John Akomfrah's incredible 'Handsworth Songs' were pivotal points of reference for me." Wyllie expands the point. "There is a sense of conversation between us both, in that someone presents a musical idea, the other person responds to it with something else, which would then be responded to again... until it feels finished. These responses are often consonant with each other but there is also a dissonance to some of this work. The music slowly evolves through these shared conversations."

It is this sense of dialogue, both between the composers, and between tranquillity and a subtly unsettling melancholy, that makes Terrain such a powerful statement. One that speaks to both our interior and exterior worlds, to our own personal landscape, to our Terrain. 

A NEW ALBUM IN THREE MOVEMENTS

TERRAIN:

I

(19.19)

II

(09.17)

III

(10.10)

Composed, performed and produced by Duncan Bellamy and Jack Wyllie. Strings composed and arranged by Jack Wyllie. Recorded at PQHQ, London and Fish Factory, London in 2020 by Greg Freeman. Mixed by Greg Freeman, Duncan Bellamy and Jack Wyllie in Berlin, 2020. Mastering and vinyl cut by John Davis at Metropolis, London. Design and photography by Veil Projects.

DUNCAN BELLAMY Drums, Electric Bass, Hang Drums, Synthesiser, Piano, Voice, Sampler, Vibraphone

JACK WYLLIE Saxophone, Piano, Synthesiser, Sampler

Strings by FRANCESCA TER-BERG Cello (I, II)  SIMMY SINGH Violin (I)  PETE BENNIE Double Bass (I)

Pre-order

Portico Quartet - Untitled (AITAOA #2) GONDWANA RECORDS April 27, 2018

1. Double Space

2. Index

3. Unrest

4. In Where We Meet

5. View from a Satellite

6. Celestial Wife

7. Reflected in Neon

8. Dust

9. Berlin

Portico Quartet has always been an impossible band to pin down. Sending out echoes of jazz, electronica, ambient music and minimalism, the group have created their own singular sound.And while their new music mixes dense layers and textures with electronic and acoustic instruments the sound remains uniquely, recognisably their own. 

In 2017 they released their fourth studio album in a decade, Art in the Age of Automation, on Gondwana Records. Released to a chorus of acclaim, the album marked a triumphant return for the Quartet after a brief hiatus as the three-piece, Portico, and marked a welcome return to the stage for the foursome with sold-out shows across Europe including the Roundhouse, London earlier this year. 

Untitled (AITAOA #2) was largely recorded at the same sessions as Art in the Age of Automation at Fish Factory Studios in London and Portico Quartet's own studio in East London. Like it's predecessor, the album was mixed at Voxton in Berlin. It is intended as a companion piece to last year's AITAOA. But works equally as well as a stand-alone album and explores similar areas of enigmatic, widescreen minimalism alongside the more hard-hitting sounds that have become a notable part of their live shows. There is no lessening of quality here, album opener, Double Space, Index, View From A Satellite and Berlin were all originally slated for AITAOA, before being held back as the band's vision of that album came into sharper focus. The insistent groove of Unrest and cinematic beauty of Celestial Wife were enhanced with further recording sessions till the band felt they were complete. The artwork is by Duncan Bellamy for Veil Projects. 

"During 2016 we embarked on writing Art in the Age of Automation, and it ended up being an incredibly fertile period for us. We wrote a lot of music - too much - but ultimately decided to record it all during recording sessions in December 2016/January 2017. After releasing AITAOA we still had a lot of music leftover… music that could easily have made it onto the album. The more we listened to these tracks the more we wanted to share it, so we set about crafting it into something worthy of release. We're really excited to share the results!." Duncan Bellamy 

This then is, Untitled, Art in the Age of Automation #2. Enjoy! 

SHOWS

Apr 05

Norwich Arts Centre

Norwich, UK

May 05

Cheltenham Jazz Festival

Cheltenham, UK

May 10

Ampere / Muffatwerk

Munich, Germany

May 15

Rough Trade East

London, UK

Jun 15

Manchester Gorilla

Manchester, UK

Jun 20

Summerhall

Edinburgh, UK

Jun 28

Double JJ Ranch & Golf Resort

Rothbury, MI

Jun 29

Great Fulford Estate Dunford

Exeter, UK

Jul 21

Endcliffe Park

Sheffield, UK

20 OCT ROUNDHOUSE LDN – GONWANA 10