Portico Quartet

Portico Quartet are four young musicians from London who sound like nothing you've ever heard before. Their strange, beautiful sound was honed busking at the South Bank in London and playing in unusual spaces; churches, galleries and chill-out zones. The band, who all live together in East London, describe their ethos as like an Indy band that plays post-jazz and their unique, hooky sound has won them many enthusiastic fans. Their debut album Knee-Deep In The North Sea (Babel/Vortex records) was named Time Out's Jazz, Folk and World music album of the year for 2007 and was one of the Nationwide Mercury Prize albums of the year for 2008.

The band comprises of Jack Wyllie (sax and loops), Milo Fitzpatrick (double bass), Nick Mulvey (Hang) and Duncan Bellamy (drums and Hang), and it's the mix of ethereal saxophone, otherwordly Hang, clattering drums and earthy double-bass that gives their music it's inimitable, beautiful sound. It was the chance purchase of the Hang by Duncan Bellamy, at WOMAD, that inspired the young friends to start a band, and while their largely intuitive music references jazz and African music it's the Hang inspired trance-like repetitive patterns of Duncan and Nick Mulvey that propel the band into stranger pastures.