Music: Portico

Once a quartet, now a trio, as Jack Wylie tells Jeff Hemmings

What’s in a word? Sometimes a great deal…. From former Mercury Music Prize nominees Portico Quartet, to just Portico, much has changed for this new-born trio, who once upon a time traded in groovy, instrumental jazz, and folk. Now, they are into electronics, trippy dance and vocals. The change in sound has been profound, as can be heard on the new album ‘Living Fields’. “We got to the point about a year ago, where we were a bit fed up and not feeling creative. We were about to stop doing it, but we thought we’d wipe the slate clean and give it another go. We were going to change the name completely, but we thought that dropping the word Quartet would be a signifier that we weren’t going to play that kind of music anymore, that jazz stuff,” says Jack Wyllie, who along with Milo Fitzpatrick and Duncan Bellamy, make up the current Portico. Original member Keir Vine left last year prior to the name change and change of direction….

“It was time for us to do something new and not feel restricted by our past, the heavy jazz associations we had. Our taste in music had changed and we wanted to do something that reflected that. The instrument palette is substantially wider too, there’s a lot of drum machines, live drums, lots of guitar which is pitched down an octave, electric bass, quite a few sampled saxophones (which was Jack’s man in instrument in the Quartet version of Portico), heavily manipulated and processed, so they don’t sound like saxophones much… Lots of ambient recordings; one of an old ship being torn apart, the noise of our studio, lots of stuff!”
Although they did feature one vocalist on their last album as Portico Quartet, this time they have made the conscious decision to include vocals more prominently on Living Fields. Jono McCleery sings lead on four tracks, alt-j’s Joe Newman on three, and Jamie Woon on one. “It was something (singing) we had been meaning to do for a while. It was all part of the change, starting fresh, moving away from that jazz world.

“We lived with Jamie for a couple of years, and he knew Jono, who’s does all the vocal duties on tour. And I grew up with Joe, we lived four doors away from each other. He was really good friends with my younger brother. They used to play in band together; I heard some of the early embryonic songs of alt-j while they were rehearsing. We always had a mutual appreciation of each other’s music.”
The Haunt, Sunday 19 April, 7pm, £16.88