CultureCritic interviews Portico Quartet...

Portico Quartet garnered fame for their relentless busking on London's South Bank, and later scooped a Mercury nomination for their 2008 debut album. Known for their use of the ‘hang', an unusual orb-shaped drum, these ex-Goldsmiths students mix art, ambient recordings made in ecclesiastical buildings and electro in a sound that breaks through the traditional jazz label they are often attributed. We catch up with drummer Duncan Bellamy and keyboardist and hang player Kier Vine on the release of their third album...

How would you describe yourselves?

DUNCAN BELLAMY: That's always a tricky one. I wouldn't want to say jazz and I wouldn't want to say electronic. It's modern music really.

So you actively shy away from the jazz label?

KEIR VINE: People say ‘there is a jazz element to the band' just because we've got a sax and a double bass. You can ask someone who's into jazz about us, and they would never say we were jazz, but then other people seem to say we are. I don't think we are a jazz band, really.

What influences were you working with on the new record?

KV: A lot of ambient sounds ended up on there, stuff that's not necessarily what people would term musical (a recording of us walking through Cologne Cathedral for example). The conversations that people were having in a church are as much a sound we wanted to include as the bass on ‘Lacker Boo'. There are a few musical things too that are a bit more unorthodox.

DB: It's not explicit, but we also definitely borrow ideas from visual and conceptual art.

How do your surroundings influence you?

KV: Living in London for the last couple of years has influenced our more electronic side. There's been a lot of great music coming out of here and it's hard to avoid.

DB: Our studio is on an industrial estate in Leighton and there definitely is some kind of osmosis going on. If you are somewhere quite bleak it does seep in. Your location has some kind of effect on your psyche, especially when you're going there every day to write stuff. It's got it's own vibe.

What's the relationship between song titles and music? One track ('4096 Colours') is named after a Gerhard Richter piece, for instance.

DB: The artwork inspired the music. That track didn't have an ambient recording in there. It was a bit flat, so we laid this recording that our saxophone player, Jack, had made from inside the Cologne Cathedral when he was looking at the Richter stained glass window.

You've said that you don't see yourself as a jazz band, but do you think more traditional acoustic or jazz ensembles are obliged to incorporate modern technology in order to be recognised now?

DB: It depends on the intent. If you're an acoustic jazz trio and you want to make music that's emulating music from the 60s - which is the most broad definition of jazz that people think of, like bebop etc. - you probably wouldn't want to use synths, because that would be a bit 70s or even 80s.

KV: In this day and age, it's not very easy to have a career in jazz music, or as a jazz musician, unless you play traditional stuff. If you're writing stuff that sounds contemporary it's not easy, so I understand that people who are that way inclined do incorporate a lot of electronics, and I'm all for that. Jazz is an ever-evolving thing. To turn your nose up at modern technology is like cutting off your nose to spite your face. There's only so much tradition any one musical genre can withstand before it dies, basically.

DB: That said, I don't think you can just crank in a synth and expect it to work.

You recorded the new album live. Did this pose any challenges?

KV: Obviously when you're playing live, there's only so much separation you can get playing everything at the same time. You inevitably end up having to overdub stuff and we're in no way looking to be purists about that. There's no problem with it.

When previous hang player Nick Mulvey left, you actively sought to re-introduce the instrument. How important is it to Portico Quartet's sound?

DB: In terms of this record, it was important. However much I found it frustrating at points, the hang was part of the sonic identity of the band and it is a wicked instrument. What was great about it was that it was very limited in terms of its tuning. It forced you into certain spaces, for which I'm actually thankful, because we wouldn't necessarily have been there otherwise.

KV: Sometimes limitations are quite productive.

As you say, the hang imposes certain limitations, as opposed to sitting on a computer and arranging pre-recorded sounds. Do you still value that acoustic, musical virtuosity?

KV: I wouldn't say virtuosity. I think we appreciate musicianship, that's different. For us it's not about playing really fast. It's about control and listening to the musicians you're playing with. Feeling over virtuosity any day. You can go horribly wrong if you go the other way round.

Why an eponymous album now - for your third?

DB: It just felt like the right time. I actually wanted to make the last album eponymous. I really like eponymous albums so I'll always push for it.

Not a lot of other titles were obvious contenders or sounded like they fit the vibe and it felt, with Kier joining us, and with Nick leaving, it was kind of a reaffirmation of the band as well.

Where do you think your music is best received live?

DB: Interesting. It depends. A lot of it is context. Live music is so dependent on what space you see a band in as much as the country. We've played awesome gigs in the UK and France and Germany and Spain and in all those places it's about the space or the crowd.

KV: Our music doesn't sit in one country; we're universal.

What is it like working with Peter Gabriel's Real World record label?

DB: They're cool. They've got a reputation for being a pure world music label so when we started there were a few apprehensions, but it couldn't have worked out better.

KV: On the new album, we're coming out with a completely new sound and they're 100% supportive. Big up Peter Gabriel.

Where does the band go from here?

KV: We've tapped into quite a rich vain of stuff, and there were a few ideas that didn't make the album. The main thing right now is to hit the road, but try and get as many tunes down as possible to follow up too. I think everyone would like to close the gap between conception and release. There's a lot more coming basically. It'd be cool to have another EP out before the end of the year.

Read the latest reviews for Portico Quartet's new eponymous album here.