Portico Quartet – Art In The Age of Automation
€41.50
Portico Quartet – Art In The Age of Automation
Format:LP
Genre: Jazz
Label: Gondwana
Mercury Prize-nominated Portico Quartet has always been an impossible band to pin down. Sending out echoes of jazz, electronica, ambient music and minimalism, the group created their own singular, cinematic sound over the course of three studio albums, from their 2007 breakthrough ‘Knee-Deep in the North Sea’, and 2010 John Leckie produced ‘Isla’, to the self titled record ‘Portico Quartet’ in 2012. Now rebooted as Portico Quartet after a brief spell as the three-piece Portico, the group are set to release their fourth studio album Art In The Age Of Automation this August on Manchester’s forward thinking indy jazz and electronica label Gondwana Records. It’s an eagerly anticipated return, with the band teasing both a return to their mesmeric signature sound and fresh new sonic departures in their new music. So much so that their four-night run at Archspace E8 (June 22-25) sold out in less than an hour as fans from around the world scrambled for tickets to hear the return of Portico Quartet.
The three parts, Terrain I, II & III are all subtly different, but a short, repeating rhythmic motif 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. The resulting album presents a profound dialogue, both between the composers and between tranquillity and a subtly unsettling melancholy, which makes Terrain such a powerful new statement. One that speaks to both our interior and exterior worlds, to our own personal landscape, to our Terrain.
In stock
Portico Quartet – Art In The Age of Automation
€41.50