PORTICO QUARTET are four young East London musicians who sound like nothing you have ever heard before. “There isn’t a band that sounds remotely like them,” according to The Observer.
“This young group make a strikingly original sound,” declared The Times, which tried to describe it, saying their music was “somewhere between jazz and modern classical music”.
Galway audiences will have a chance to experience this highly original band and decide for itself what their music sounds like when the Portico Quartet play the Aula Maxima Lower, NUI Galway this Tuesday at 8pm.
The band - Jack Wyllie (saxophones and electronics ), Milo Fitzpatrick (double bass ), Nick Mulvey (Hang and percussion ), and Duncan Bellamy (drums ) - are all in their early 20s and bring an indie ethos to the world of jazz.
The four friends decided to form the band after Duncan had bought a hang drum, a Swiss instrument which creates melodies and chimes when played percussively. They began busking on London’s South Bank and eventually toured across Europe before recording their debut album.
Knee Deep In The North Sea was released in 2008 and the band was rewarded with a Mercury Music Prize nomination in 2008. Their next album was recorded in the prestigious Abbey Road Studios (home of The Beatles ) and produced by the great John Leckie who produced The Stone Roses’ legendary debut and Radiohead’s OK Computer.
The resulting album Isla was showered with critical praise, with MOJO describing it as a brew of “Steve Reich mathematics, Radiohead dread, African desert grooves, and ECM northern melancholy …a chiming cavernous sound-world that is both exotic and hypnotic”.
The concert is organised by Music For Galway and the NUI Arts In Action & Music Network. Tickets are €20/16/6 and are available from 091 - 705962.
