At its core, music is maths. Jazz typifies this, with rhythms and harmonies needing more than ever to add up in improvised playing. However, within minutes of Portico Quartet’s gig, two plus two no longer equalled four and I was not going to receive marks for my working out, either.
This group’s attention to detail is astounding. Everything, down to the reverberations of a drumstick on a cymbal, is controlled and deliberate. The stage was a jungle of wires and loop pedals, sound desks and saxophones, but the group are intrepid explorers. Each track was masterfully crafted, with polyphony the word of the day, but it was the atmosphere of the live show as a whole which mattered so much. An intricate light show helped to make rhythms even more slippery. Tension built and built through each piece until the group would stop, smiling bashfully and offering shy nods and thumbs up to their admirers. We were expected to applaud, as is custom in gigs. It felt wrong to clap, though, and risk breaking the spells that Portico Quartet kept on casting over the Assembly Rooms.
Articulation was also provided by the trademark riffs of certain well-loved tracks such as ‘Ruins’, ‘City of Glass’ and ‘Clipper’. Keir Vine’s indefatigable arms defied belief in ‘Line’. He started a cyclical motif on an unusual, steel drum-like percussion instrument - a ‘hang’ - and kept it going for ten minutes or more. A soprano and tenor sax, wonderfully if quietly played by Jack Wyllie, added vocal-like lines to the melodies underneath. I’m always wary of the word rousing, but it describes Milo Fitzpatrick’s bass playing (on both an electric double bass and a bass guitar) very well. Duncan Bellamy kept a cool head and a cool hand as a one man metronome, drumming, tracking and putting the super in his superintending of the sounds on stage.
Seeing the group’s music being made in front of us gave the performance an alchemistic quality; one that makes the show difficult to describe now and one that made it impossible not to enjoy on the night. At its core, Portico Quartet’s music is magic.
