Crack

Portico Quartet’s live performance has moved on a lot since the early days. Long before the Mercury Prize nomination, the global touring and the Abbey Road recording sessions, they were just four musicians jamming on London’s South Bank.
Back then it was all about the simplicity of their elements and their ability to innovate within the confines of their basic set up: an upright bass, a basic kit, a saxaphone and (the then unheard-of) hang drum. Nowadays their set up is more complex and as a result, so is their live show. Live samples, loops and reverberating soundscapes are the order of the day. The possibilities for this unique outfit from south London have become so much bigger than anyone could have foreseen back in the early days. The question is, where to go with it?
Nick Mulvey, the hang player and inadvertent front man, took a moment after playing St Georges to sit down with Crack and talk about all things Portico.
“We’re sort of the un-aimed arrow, it never misses” Nick explains, and then proceeds to chuckle at his own words. Sure, it is a bit of a cliché, and Nick is obviously aware of the fact, but it does perfectly explain Portico’s accidental genius.
“What I mean is, we don’t have any set goals so much as just to keep writing and keep expressing ourselves.”


Watching you play live now, the new, more complex sound has really come together. Was it tricky moving forward from such a pure and effective start-point?

“We just had to make the sounds we wanted to make. I totally believe what’s good about the band is the tension between those of us who want to make free jazz and be much more experimental, and those of us who are much more song-based, suckers for melody.”

This route has seen you embracing a lot more modern, electronic sounds and equipment. How did this come about?

“We’ve been touring a lot, so it’s been a while since we’ve had any time to get writing, so what naturally occurs is more experimental, ambient pieces. Partly because there’s not been the time to write the more focused and refined things, but also we’ve always written refined pieces so the natural trajectory was to start expanding outwardly from that. It was quite obvious for Jack to initially start looping his sax and then the other guys started following. Also, it’s very relevant for us as so many of the interesting sounds we hear are electronic. Everything’s as valid as anything else, so we’ve never had anything against electronic sounds.”

So is it also a reflection of what you’ve all been listening to?

“Yeah. We all listen to a fair share of dubstep and more glitchy kind of bass music. I had Kode9 on my stereo for a long, long time. I think it’s always a reflection of what we’re listening to. Stuff like In a Silent Way by Miles Davis, I mean its nothing to do with Dubstep or anything but he started manipulating sounds and taking acoustic sounds and chopping them around years ago.”

The great thing about your music is it’s somehow universally appealing and still very ambiguous. How do you describe it? Would you say you were a jazz band?

“No! I don’t call it anything. I don’t have to. I don’t have to justify it. I mean, Radiohead are as much an influence as John Coltrane. Esbjorn Svensson Trio as much as Steve Reich as much as King Tubby as much as… Bach or…"

Bach! Really?

"Alright, maybe Bach’s a bit more of a long reference, but there’s no need to restrict it really, which I like because it creates a conversation. But then you’re like, how can I condense it quick enough? But then I realise that’s just sort of marketing and publicity and stuff. It’s good though, because you end up either talking about music or consumption of music. It’s a little bit pretentious, but it’s an interesting conversation.”

Do you feel happy spreading your reach across such a diverse audience of people who are all into such different types of music? People who come with completely different reference points.

“I feel really happy with that and I hope that is always the case. With the breadth of our influences, anything’s viable really. We never set out to be a metal band or a blues band or a jazz band. And again, the hang works as this sort of freeloader, where it doesn’t belong to the raving kids or to the jazz fans. It’s new to everyone so is free from any preconceptions. Plus everyone likes to get a bit trippy, everyone likes to relax and feel it, well most people I suppose. A 17 year old has got his reasons and a fifty year old has his reasons and they’re probably quite different.”

So what is it about the hang that is so special?

“The novelty disarms people, so all the things you think you like and you think you don’t like get put aside for a second. That opens the door and then the sound is just beautiful. It’s to do with the way they make it, the resonant sympathetic harmonies. I don’t really know why. It’s fascinating, why do those resonating fifths in each note matter to us all?”

The hang is a difficult instrument to get hold of isn’t it? You used to use two, now you have three!

“We’ve got four actually, we’ve got a fourth at home which is out of tune. It’s a pretty unique story nowadays. The only guys who make them and can tune them live in Switzerland, but they kind of hate us, which is a problem.”

Why the hating? Surely you guys have done their business a lot of favours, not to mention the great music you’ve made with their instrument?

“Its because of the mallets. They don’t really care about profits and expansion firstly, they’re quite esoteric – which I’ve got enormous respect for – but they’re pretty weird with it, really dogmatic. They live up in the Swiss Alps. They say the hang should be played solo, with hands only, in the lap, only one at a time, for meditative ends, no amplification.”

Crack can’t help but imagine some strange, magical instrument making elves from another planet.

“The people who makes the hang aren’t from London. We went over there and they warned us of the gods of chaos! We’d just got off the plane, it was nine in the morning and we went up to get them tuned and they knew all about us, that we played with mallets and they just gave us a hard time basically. I find it hard because I do like them, I think they’re really unusual and I respect a lot of things about them, but increasingly I find it frustrating because they can’t see beyond the tool. They’re so precious about the thing that they’re completely anti-innovation and they’re ultimately very conservative. Surely the thing that matters is the music. But they can’t stand the way I play it and couldn’t even care anything about Milo’s playing or Duncan’s playing or what we do as a whole. All they hear is their instrument being sounded in a slightly different way. Its hard to imagine any other comparison, because no one person made the guitar or whatever, but I just figure once its out there it’s out there and you should embrace it.”

Do you think you’ll ever be able to move away from the hang, or is that an essential part of Portico?

“For me I’m a guitarist and a songwriter first and this, in a funny way, is like a brilliant tangent. I mean it’s become the main thing obviously, but we actually met through my songs and even did a few gigs without a name or anything. Then one day we just got out the hang and it was instantly a much more interesting pallet to work with. We brought in a marimba too once and I moved onto that and we composed a piece with it. But instantly when we took the hang out, it lost this gelling element in the middle because the hang is so generous in its harmonies. It kind of hugs everything in. It’s really part of our sound, so every time I played the guitar or something else we would really miss it. I think putting the nylon strings through an effects box would be the way to do it. When you put a classical guitar in the mix, suddenly it’s got a whole host of associations and the sound is so different. The hang has no baggage. It doesn’t link you with anything. It’s a jammy way around a lot of people’s associations.”

But at the same time it must be limiting to always have to use that same sound in all your tracks.

“Right! That’s were we get to and it was limiting for the second album, but we managed to mine through and get something new out. All the elements; volume and harmony and tone, are fixed. I have fantasies sometimes of chucking them over a cliff or something. No, I love them, they’re really important to what we do. It will always be there, it will always be a big part of our sound.”

The track Line from your second album was one of the tracks where you were clearly heading out on a more experimental tangent. How did that come about?

“It’s an important one for us actually, because it came in the middle of when we were writing the second album and we were pissing each other off because we’d make these amazing grooves but didn’t know where to take them or how to develop them. So one day we just thought let’s just not even think or talk about it, let’s just all play and see how it goes. From this long improvisation came that space, where Milo wasn’t doing anything and every now and again he’d go ‘Bommmmm!’ and Dunc was doing nothing. I had two chords and Jack had a kind of roaming roll and every time I moved that would trigger Milo to wait a bit and then do his next one. Then we just recorded it and listened back and found it really worked. So we do work within parameters but it’s not too composed.”

Do you plan to collaborate with anyone else in the future? Would you invite other musicians or producers, or do you think that would ruin the chemistry the four of you have?

“Not necessarily, its something that has never really ‘just happened,’ and I know it never really ‘just happens,’ but it would have to be the right person. We did a collaboration with Laura Marling actually, but she never called us back! Well, she came to us to work on a track for her album, but to be honest, what she wanted wasn’t really what we do. She was great though, it was really nice to hang out, but we’re so tight, we’ve found so much just looking inwards that we haven’t really needed to look outside.”

You did the second album at Abbey Road with the legendary John Leckie producing it. Did you learn a lot working with him?

“Only afterwards do I realise how amazing it was. We made our first album kind of on the fly and I was kind of, not blasé, but uninformed. I knew who he was, but didn’t really think about it. Now I listen back and think, fuck, he’s got that sound so quickly and so well. He’s such a professional. I really learnt a lot from him right across the board like how to sit up straight and do things properly. We’re along way off working on the third album, but I’d jump at the chance of working with him again if what we want is what he wants because he’s amazing.”

So no plans for a new album just yet then?

“We’ve got a very busy year. We’ll be in the States in September and then another European tour in November I think. That’s after a summer of festivals every weekend. That’s our world at the moment. Then at the end of the year or certainly next year, we’re going to get writing again.”

Words: Jack Dolan

Tune: Line

http://www.myspace.com/porticoquartet

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