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All credit to HiFi Club for putting on such an unexpectedly eclectic support line-up. I arrived a couple of tracks before the first support act, Sleaze Orchestra, wound up. The small stage was charmingly jam-packed with musicians and instruments playing jazz shaped by unison instrumental riffs, lots of fourths and fifths giving it an unusual Tudor flavour, excellent soloing and gorgeous scatting from singer Anna Scott.
Next up was bizarre and charming flautist/flute-boxer/one-man-band Laura J Martin. She was so fascinating to watch –like a busy person, she was incredibly focussed, delivering her set so directly that you could almost see the organised world of musical ideas she held in her slightly barmy head. I was so intrigued by her set that I looked her up on myspace and here’s what I found under the ‘sounds like’ column:
thinkie folkie weirdie beardie (without the beardie), and funki (with an *i* - check it), mixed in a cauldron with some jazzy slurp = niceness squared = me
Eccentricity aside, Laura’s set was faultless. Having opened her set by boldly launching into unaccompanied flute-boxing (beat boxing through a flute, which adds pitch to just rhythm), she produced music bursting with complex rhythmic vitality over which she sang melodies that reminded me of nursery rhymes.
Electronics have done amazing things for the possibilities of the modern-day one-man-band! Laura created intricate and complex music with just herself, a flute, a mandolin, her 'trusty' rj-50 loop pedal and a plug socket that lone musicians in days gone by could never have dreamt of...
Following this support line up, Portico Quartet had a lot to beat, added to which glowing reviews like ‘This unforgettable disc shimmers with brilliance’ (BBC Music Magazine), A phenomenon in the making” (The Independent) and, (the phrase that opens press-releases the world over) “Sound like nothing you’ve ever heard” (Time Out), had me preparing for something special...
Portico Quartet are a four-piece band (Saxophone, Percussion, Hang and Double Bass) that describe their ethos as “like an Indie band that pays post-jazz”... confused? Well from what I gather from speaking to band member Nick Mulvey the term simply aims to clarify the position of their music in relation to jazz - while it is heavily informed by jazz (riffs, improv-based, etc...) it definitely takes a step beyond what jazz seeks to achieve, crossing over into what could also be described as world, indie or even acoustic trance.
Portico Quartet proved the publicity cliché right, for a change; this really was unlike anything I’ve ever heard before. In an industry that you can call mass-produced and globalised in the same sentence, that’s saying a lot.
Arguably the band’s defining feature, is the unusual and little known ‘hang’ (pictured); an instrument that looks a little like a set of upside down woks (see for yourself!) and sounds a bit like a cross between gamelan and steel drums (softer/less ting-y than gamelan but not as fuzzy/shapely a sound as the steel drum).
In the words of band-member Nick Mulvey the formation of the band was 'like serendipity'; the 'unique character' of the hang captivated them at WOMAD festival a few years back and while 'tinkering' and improvising together later on they stumbled across their unique and unforgettable sound.
Repeated hang riffs form the basis for Portico’s music, giving it a trance-like quality that morphs effortlessly from meditative calm to danceable verve. Its rhythmic and harmonic continuity offsets the counterpoint of sax/bass/drum syncopations and melodies and seems to act like glue, binding all of the musicians' musical strands together.
Jack Wyllie (Soprano Saxophone) and Milo Fitzpatrick (Double Bass) exhibited outstanding musical prowess in their sensitive soloing and dueting; Wyllie moving from lyricism reminiscent of Jan Garbarek to frenzied fly-away virtuosity, and Fitzpatrick's Double Bass tender and haunting.
What ever category you put it under - who cares anyway?- this music has an earthy quality that transcends the rigidity of categories. John Fordham of the Guardian is spot on in his articulation of the 'jazz dilemma' the quartet pose: “...when a jazz or jazz-influenced band jumps the barriers - so listeners don't know any more whether they're supposed to be a jazz audience or not - then the appeal of this inquisitive and audacious form of music-making (and that's what it is, not a genre) bursts through.”
The hangs are somehow comforting in their repetitive, soft, warm timbre, and provide a lulling musical hook that creates a sense of familiarity that much of jazz music can't claim to have. It simultaneously makes sense of the melodies and solos that soar over the top while also throwing them into relief. Even jarring and experimental moments become understated and inquisitive, rather than bombastic and abstract.
Portico Quartet’s UK tour continues at Fibbers on Thursday 27th November at 7.30pm (£10 o.t.d./£8 adv.), then the Hare and Hounds, Birmingham on 28th, the Junction, Cambridge on 30th, the ICA, London, on 3rd December and Talking Heads, Southampton, on 4th December. Their 2008 Nationwide Mercury Prize-winning album ‘Knee Deep in the North Sea’ is on sale now. For more information, find them on myspace.
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