Portico Quartet’s minimal future jazz sets to wash Concorde2 in a heady jam, equal parts Burial and Steve Reich, on Wednesday.
The quartet, known for their soft strokes of the steel-pan-like hang drum, won favour for being the Jazz nomination for 2008’s Mercury Prize with their debut album Knee Deep In The North Sea after relentless busking on London’s South Bank. Unlike many selections, Portico Quartet possess considerable crossover appeal. Using numerous delay and looping effects on Jack Wylie’s saxophone together with drummer Duncan Bellamy’s rippling fills and cascading cymbals, the band’s sound frequently crescendoes with the jilted metronomy of contemporary electronica, when not jazzing along to explicitly synthetic beats and loops on their more recent work.
Citing influences such as Burial and Mount Kimbie alongside the more obvious Steve Reich, the quartet resound with more poignancy than the sum of their parts. The hang’s lingering pulses ring out arpeggiator-like motifs one moment and dynamic props the next, Â lending a warm extra headspace to the band’s some-time cold, warped sound.
Live, this is a pleasure to behold, as extended improvisations of their more progressive numbers see Wylie’s saxophone-sampling reach dizzying heights with alien sonics and stretched minimal sections effortlessly invoking Steve Reich’s poised restraint. Giving up chin-stroking dissonance and more academic experimentation in favour of yearning melodics and rhythmic ear-stroking befits the group well, comprising a show just as well suited to the jazz club as the gig venue, and their show at Concorde will be no exception.
£15 adv + BF, 19:30-23:00
For more information visit www.concorde2.co.uk
