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The four-piece have made a follow up that makes their beginnings busking on the South Bank seem like a myth propagated by publicists. Receiving a nod of approval for their pigeonhole-defying venture really has emboldened them.
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This is red wine music, no doubt about it, but red wine music for the discerning indie intelligentsia, perfect for a long night where the only ambition you've got left is to sink so far into the floor cushions that you'll never get up again.
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Their approach may seem unorthodox, but the final result is as compelling as it is accessible.
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MojoIsla feeds on Steve Reich mathematics, Radiohead dread, African desert grooves and ECM northern melancholy to travel into a new, chiming cavernous sound-world that is both exotic and hypnotic. [Nov 2009, p.100]
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Q MagazineRicher and more rewarding than their Mercury-nominated breakthrough, Isla still has jazz running through it's veins, based as it is largely around sax and double bass, but the London band have broader ambitions. [Nov 2009, p.111]
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Blending an almost futuristically elegant sense of atmosphere with flashes of raw, flesh-and-blood expression, Portico Quartet isn't the first to carve out such a pan-global sonic world, but it's created one that's welcoming to visit.
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Isla is nothing revolutionary. That's not to say that its originality is completely lost, but perhaps a touch more adventure and earnest into the mix would change the Portico Quartet's breeze into something much more powerful.
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Isla boldly showcases an unconventional combination of instruments and melodic ideas, a revolutionary musical terrain that Portico Quartet will hopefully continue to explore.
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With a sound centred around a tunable percussion instrument called a hang (think mellow steel drum), skittering jazz drums, saxophone and loops, the quartet, who live Monkees-like in a shared house in East London, serve up a fresh vision of jazz, drawing sounds from across the globe.
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It might be a long time before jazzers get a truly surprising improvisational blast off a Portico album, but Wyllie plays to his strengths when he deploys texture and tonal variation over rather uneventfully free-jazzy phrasing.
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UncutThe ubiquitous use of the hang, a sophisticated modern take on the old-fashioned steel pan, gives a distinctive sound to this east London quartet. It's a surprisingly versatile instrument from which Nick Mulvey and Duncan Bellamy coax melodic and rhythmic patterns to complement Jack Wylie's inventive sax riffing. [Nov 2009, p.99]