Portico Quartet

“Live / Remix”

(Realworld Records)

Here at The Jazzmann I’ve documented the remarkable career of Portico Quartet and their metamorphosis from cheerful, sunny, hang playing buskers into cool, edgy electro improvisers.

PQ’s 2007 début “Knee Deep In The North Sea”, originally released on the Babel label, was a surprise success and earned the group a Mercury Music Prize nomination. It was a set full of catchy tunes rendered more exotic by the group’s extensive use of the hang drum, an instrument that in those early days defined the band’s distinctive sound. With “Knee Deep” the group garnered something of a cult following, in the main a younger audience than the normal jazz demographic.

The success of that first album saw the in demand quartet move to Peter Gabriel’s Realworld Records for the release of their second album “Isla” (2009). This was a darker hued affair with the sound very much influenced by the band’s new producer John Leckie, a legendary figure in rock circles and the man who produced the first Stone Roses album. Leckie began to sculpt the band’s sound and under his influence saxophonist Jack Wyllie and bassist Milo Fitzpatrick first commenced experimenting with the concept of live looping. It was a process that fascinated them and in time Wyllie, Fitzpatrick and drummer Duncan Bellamy began to acquire a bewildering number of electronic gizmos as the band’s sound edged ever closer towards the worlds of electronic, minimalist, ambient and even dance music. It was a move that was to cost them the services of founder member Nick Mulvey who eventually left the band to pursue a solo career as a guitar playing singer/songwriter.

Mulvey was the group’s principal exponent of the hang and by the time of the group’s third album, simply titled “Portico Quartet”, in 2012 he had been replaced by Keir Vine who added keyboards and synthesisers to the group’s electronic arsenal whilst occasionally doubling on hang. Bellamy, who also used to double on hang abandoned the instrument altogether and instead augmented his drum kit with electronic percussion and an effects unit similar to the set up used by Food’s Thomas Stronen. By the time of the third album the hang was therefore even less an integral part of the band’s sound as they reached out to an increasingly younger audience, augmenting their live shows with increasingly sophisticated lighting and playing rock venues such as London’s Koko in preference to jazz festivals and village halls. I saw the band three times during the first half of 2011 and in just six months witnessed a remarkable transformation as Mulvey gave way to Vine and the band continued the process of re-inventing themselves with remarkable celerity.

“Live / Remix” reveals the band continuing this process on a series of recordings culled from their 2012 tour. The majority of the live material on disc one is sourced from their most most recent album but the programme also contains radically revamped new versions of old favourites “Clipper” , “Dawn Patrol” and “Line” from the “Isla” album.

The remixes on the second disc offer fresh insights into the same material by a series of guest producers in collaboration with the band and engineer Greg Freeman. The world of the remix is not one I’m particularly familiar with and historically I’ve often felt the process to be fairly redundant, a re-packaging of already extant material designed to fill out a disc and offering little of any real significance to the listener. However I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the remixes of the PQ material, the “Remix” half of this album turning out to be a rewarding listening experience in its own right. Of course it helps to have such strong material to work with, despite the darkening of timbre and texture PQ have lost none of their ability to conjure a memorable melodic hook.

The live half of the album begins with the ethereal and mysterious “Window Seat”, a wash of ambient electronic sounds and textures that features little conventional instrumentation other than Fitzpatrick’s eerily bowed bass. For all that it is haunting and highly effective.

“City Of Glass” begins with Bellamy at the drum kit building up layers of rhythm in conjunction with Fitzpatrick’s bass and Vine’s synth pulses. Wyllie’s sax is heavily treated and the sound of electronica is present throughout. Overall the effect is cinematic, one increasingly gets the impression that PQ would make excellent film composers, particularly in the sci fi genre.

“Rubidium” is segued with “Line” from “Isla” and represents the first appearance of the hang which opens the proceedings here in conjunction with Wyllie’s delicate soprano sax. The mood subtly darkens as the piece progresses courtesy of Fitzpatrick’s cello like arco bass and gradually accreting layers of electronica. The hang slowly fades from the mix but returns for “Line”, one of the more impressionistic pieces from the group’s second album. Taken as a whole this segue is a good example of the band’s painterly qualities and their capacity for creating atmosphere and ambience.

“Ruins” strikes a good balance between Portico Quartet past and present. The traditional elements of a strong melodic hook, use of the hang and Wyllie’s unadorned tenor are embellished by the group’s newer deep grooves and increasingly inventive use of electronica. Similarly the perennially popular “Clipper” where the central “storm” section has graduated into a maelstrom of squalling tenor and swirling electronics.

Inspired by the light generated by the sun through the stained glass windows of Cologne Cathedral “4096 Colours” is another example of the new impressionistic, almost ambient, side of the band first glimpsed on “Window Seat”. Here electronic beats and glitches combine with Wyllie’s spacious looped sax to give an air of grandeur akin to a sci fi Jan Garbarek.

“Laker Boo” with its recurring synth motif and programmed drum beats is arguably the closest PQ get to dance music but in their hands these elements are used to more impressionistic effect. My review of the studio version cited it as PQ’s “most futuristic music yet, a soundtrack for an updated version of Blade Runner”.

Swedish vocalist Cornelia (Dahlgren) joins the group for the song “Steepless” following her guest appearance on the same piece on the studio album. Her Bjork like voice brings an added sense of Scandinavian cool to the group’s music, a direction they already seemed to be moving towards anyway. Singing her own evocative lyrics Cornelia brings a welcome human element, albeit a rather chilly one, to the group’s increasingly technological sound.

The live half of the album concludes with two takes on “Isla” favourite “Dawn Patrol” which develops from gentle hang percolations through increasingly complex drum and bass grooves as Wyllie coaxes unsettling Middle Eastern style tones from his sax. The centre piece of the tune is a blistering sax and drum battle through which Wyllie expresses his admiration for the late, great, Albert Ayler. The shorter second take offers an alternative, more impressionistic ending after the group emerge from the sax/drums stand off thereby suggesting that improvisation is still very much at the core of their music making.

The “Remix” disc takes the group further into the world of electronica and dance music beginning with Will Ward’s re-working of “Window Seat”. An independent producer Ward is also a member of the electronic trio Circle Traps. His added beats retain the ambience of the piece but edge it subtly but perceptibly towards the dance floor. SBTRKT takes “Line” even further in this direction via extra beats, glitches, samples and loops. 

Luke Abbott retains the brooding ambience of “Rubidium” by subtly mutating the original recording.

There are two remixes of the dance floor friendly “Laker Boo”. DJ and producer Scratcha DVA’s “Hi:Emotions” remix gives the piece an edgy, urgent, urban vibe that remains impressionistic and unsettling.
Berlin based DJ and producer Luca Lozano, head of that city’s Klasse record label, takes the tune into more obvious dance floor territory with more rapidly repeating beats but something of the original’s “Blade Runner” sense of alienation remains.

“City Of Glass” is also taken onto the dance floor by LV’s energetic mix with the drums speeded up and given prominence in the mix alongside chattering synths and radically distorted sax. It’s the liveliest piece of the set and the one that departs most drastically in mood and pace from the original.

By contrast the Konx Om Pax remix of “4096 Colours” stays closer to the spirit of the original, taking it even further into the sphere of ambient and minimalist music.

There are two versions of the song “Steepless”, the first by Capac who won an online remix competition on the band’s Soundcloud page. Judged the best of some three hundred entries his remix matches Cornelia’s fragile vocal against a field recording of electronic and random sounds to mesmerising effect. It’s probably the only piece on the second disc that can genuinely be considered as a true improvement on the original.

The remix half of the package ends with a brief edit of “Steepless” by the band themselves with Cornelia’s voice offset by synth washes and pulses. Despite its brevity this is also haunting and effective.

“Live/Remix” is the sound of a band that is still developing and moving forward. Amazingly PQ have expanded their fan base as their music has taken on increased layers of sophistication, it’s a trick that remarkably few bands manage to pull off, The Beatles being the premier example. The live set is the superior of the two discs but the remix package is a very welcome bonus that offers more rewards than most others of its ilk. As far as I can tell the package retails for the price of a single album making it good value. Whether it’s an essential purchase for listeners who already own their studio albums is debatable but it would be perfect for first time buyers and, of course, an excellent concert souvenir. There’s the sense of the band ending another chapter in their remarkable career, it’s going to be fascinating to see what they do next.     

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