3:36pm Tuesday 2nd December 2008
Following on from their huge success with their album Knee Deep in the North Sea, a Nationwide Mercury Prize album 2008, Portico Quartet are now bringing their strange and wonderful sound to the masses on a UK tour.
Portico Quartet are four young musicians who are based in South London, but two of which are from Southampton, who sound like nothing you’ve ever heard before.
Living and playing together they describe their ethos as like an Indy band that plays post-jazz, and their unique sound has won them fans from Gilles Peterson to Radio 4. As well as being a Nationwide Mercury Prize album this year, Knee-Deep was also Time Out’s Jazz, Folk and World music album of the year for 2007.
Portico Quartet are Jack Wyllie (soprano Saxophone), Milo Fitzpatrick (double bass), who hail from Southampton, Nick Mulvey (Hang and percussion) and Duncan Bellamy (drums and Hang). The Hang is a steel drum type instrument.
Their dance friendly, melodic brand of hook-heavy post-jazz was honed busking across Europe and playing in unusual spaces; churches, galleries and chill-out zones.
A weekly session at the South Bank and residency at the Brixton Ritzy earned them a cult following and inspired London’s hippest jazz club, the Vortex, to start a label to release their music.
Sessions on XFM and Radio 1 followed, as did a storming set at the Glastonbury Festival.
Portico Quartet will play Talking Heads, in Portswood Road, Southampton, on Thursday, December 4.
© Copyright 2001-2012 Newsquest Media Group
http://www.hampshirechronicle.co.uk/trade_directory/