Portico Quartet – Rough Trade East, London – Wed 21/10/09
Click to enlarge (Photo: Dom Jones)
It’s always a pleasure to visit either Rough Trade store, one of the last bastions of successful independent record dealership in London. The delight is somewhat amplified when a great band is playing there, such was the case last night. Having had prior arrangements every time Portico Quartet have played near me since i first heard of them, this show was much anticipated given that i was actually available to watch them.
They are promoting their new album Isla, released two days beforehand. They have also done an exclusive deal with Rough Trade where, by buying their album from them, you get a free EP with 4 tracks of three exclusive songs and one alternate take.
The band start off quietly, which suits the intimate mood of having an audience sitting cross-legged on the floor as close as two metres away from the stage. The tune is called Su-Bo’s Mental Meltdown, one which isn’t on the album but on the afore-mentioned EP. Hang player Nick Mulvey plays between 3 different hangs, stretching himself into some seemingly uncomfortable positions to get some of the notes (almost Kama Sutra-esque); double bassist Milo Fitzpatrick switches between plucking and bowing with some fast, nifty fingerwork; saxophonist Jack Wyllie plays a range of catchy melodies (á la new album opener Stone Paper Scissors) and overblows in a controlled manner in the noisier sections; and drummer Duncan Bellamy was so impressive that he gets his own paragraph later on.
Click to enlarge (Photo: Dom Jones)
Throughout the set the band embark on beautiful sonic soundscapes and the occasional chaotic outbreak, sometimes with a sudden drop but sometimes melting seamlessly from section to section. A couple of their intros start really atmospherically, with all sorts of squeaks, scrapes and noises you wouldn’t expect the instruments to make, augmented by the use of delay and reverb pedals.
Visually they are nothing outrageous but have an air of confident modesty about them; although they make the playing look effortless, they somehow don’t look as if they’re not trying. Spokesman Nick comes across as very friendly when addressing the audience in between songs, generating a couple of chuckles along the way.
Despite trying not to be pigeon-holed as a jazz band, i would maintain that Duncan is very much a jazz drummer. Throughout the set he crashes around the kit, sizzle cymbal rattling for several bars after he hits it, using rim shots as well as plain smacking the drums, swapping with sticks, brushes and mallets throughout. The way in which he ends Line, with differently pitched rim clicks across the kit, is pretty mesmerising.
Click to enlarge (Photo: Dom Jones)
Throughout the set Nick swaps the position of his hangs around (each hang is tuned differently, so having them in different positions allows him to play to the different tunings of the songs) and Jack switches from soprano to tenor sax and back again. At points i find myself questioning whether he has a tremelo pedal in front of him but it turns out that he’s just good at playing.
The final song of their set, Life Mask, starts with Jack looping a melodica drone before reverting to his sax. It’s a relatively calm number but it ends with a crashing climax with the sax harmonising over itself via the loop pedal.
I was fortunate enough to have a brief chat with Nick after the show. His thoughts on the hang itself (which he must, by now, be fed up of talking about) were something along these lines (i use quote marks although these are almost certainly not the exact words he used but the point remains):
Portico Quartet - Isla
“A lot of people use the hang with the palms of their hands but we used beaters when we started to get a bit more volume to keep up with the drums… The makers of the hang are very much into the whole spiritual side of things so you’ll see a lot of people playing them by the side of a lake. We want to wake these guys up a bit!”
(Yea, it was something like that.)
The band will be doing an official launch at Koko in London on Monday 2nd November. Click here for tickets. This is the London date of their UK tour which they are sharing with experimental minimalist band Sweet Billy Pilgrim.
October 22, 2009 at 1:34 PM
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