PORTICO QUARTET

Treading the tightrope between jazz, minimalism and electronica, these guys would be equally at home playing a seated concert hall as they would a sweaty festival tent.

Sonically, the album embraces their classic sound palette of drums, saxophone, bass and Hang Drums but the sound has modulated whilst still channelling beauty and mystery. Emotive, primal and deeply human jazz meets rigid, tightly knit and mathematic electronica. Refusing to lean one way or the other, the Portico Quartet we know today will appeal as much to fans of Cinematic Orchestra as they will to Kamasi Washington worshippers. Their 5th studio album is an exquisite record bubbling with intricate melodies, epic vistas and swelling electronics. All the passion and power that jazz conveys gets wound into coiled shapes that twist, turn, unfurl then constrict across a framework able to contain their spasmodic or transcendent moments without letting them take off into abstraction. It’s a delicate operation and when you feel that they’re about to burst out of the track, they bring it back just in time.

"Mesmerising…tighter and tauter, this is their strongest project in a decade" - Clash