distritojazz_discos_jazz_Portico_islaEl cuarteto londinense Portico es otra muestra más de la pujante escena jazzística que se está viviendo en el Reino Unido; como lo demuestran bandas como The Neil Cowley Trio o Blessing.
“Isla” es el segundo disco en la carrera de este joven grupo (sus componentes rondan los 25 años), tras su debut con ‘Knee-Deep in the North Sea’, en el 2007., que le valió una nominación a los Mercury Prize británicos. De su éxito da cuenta el hecho de que este nuevo disco lo han grabado para Real World, el prestigioso sello fundado por Peter Gabriel y que han tenido como productor a John Leckie (Stone Roses, Doves, XTC, Radiohead) y grabado en los míticos estudios de Abbey Road.
Portico hace un jazz que, sobre todo, parece beber del minimalismo de compositores como Terry Riley, Philip Glass y Steve Reich; con algunas dosis de free y de avanti-garde. Lo que proponen trae a la memoria tanto a artistas de los años ochenta y noventa como Durruti Colum, como a jazzman del estilo de Jan Garbarek y John Surman, y en general al primer sonido de ECM.
Buena parte del sonido de este cuarteto viene marcado por la utilización del hang; instrumento que parece se ha puesto de moda entre muchos de los más jóvenes percusionistas europeos. Para hacerse una idea del sonido de este instrumento, de origen suizo, hay que remitirse a los steel-drums de Trinidad-Tobago. Así, no es de extrañar que la música de Portico acabe teniendo ese punto intimista y –peligrosamente- cuasi místico.
Y sí, este jazz atmosférico, introvertido, exento de complicaciones, que puede sonar como un paisaje sonoro de jazz de cámara pensado para bailar; puede gustar, y me atrevería a decir que va a gustar, a un amplio rango de público.
José Manuel Pérez Rey
http://www.distritojazz.com/discos-jazz/portico-quartet-isla
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Having created a seismic sensation in Britain with its first album, Knee Deep In The North Sea (Babel, 2007)—which was a Mercury Prize Album Of The Year in 2008—Portico Quartet now releases that "difficult" second album. Can the group better its precocious debut? Yes it can. Portico has grown, as a collective entity and as individual musicians, and it's associating, rewardingly, with some heavy hitters: signed to Peter Gabriel's Real World Records and produced by John Leckie, whose credits include Doves, Radiohead and The Stone Roses.
Portico gathered much of its early media attention from the use of hangs—tuned percussion instruments which in appearance resemble a pair of cooking woks (see the YouTube clip below). Portico was the first British band, maybe the first band in the world, to use hangs, and the novelty served it well.
With a character of their own, hangs nevertheless carry traces of Tibetan prayer bells, steel drums, gamelan gongs, tubular bells, cymbals and xylophones. Their sound is pure and mellifluous, but without the sustained resonance of real bells; they are percussive, but without the hard-edged impact of cymbals or xylophones. Hangs don't work as washes of chill-out ambient sound, but they lend themselves perfectly to riffs and ostinatos, producing rapid-fire rhythms with attractively rounded edges.
One of the strengths of Isla is that the hangs aren't treated like exclamation marks; their particular attributes have become more fully integrated into the group sound. The basic Portico paradigm has hang players Nick Mulvey and Duncan Bellamy, who also plays kit drums, working in tandem with double bassist Milo Fitzpatrick to produce interconnecting layers of beats and melodic motifs. Some might call this "trance," but there's too much evolution going on to merit that generic description. Saxophonist and (less is more) loopist Jack Wyllie rides the waves, stating most of the themes and taking most of the formal solos. He sticks mainly to prettily played and gently handled soprano, but adds some rough, broken-note strewn alto or tenor to the racing "Clipper."
The album is characterized by a brisk liveliness: even when a top line is slow and leisurely, as for instance in the extenuated soprano notes which state "Line," the underlying patterns played by the hangs and/or the drums and bass are frequently in double or quadruple time. Melodies are attractive and catchy. Rhythms are insistent. Improvisation is to the fore. Isla is the nuts.
By CHRIS MAY
October 12, 2009
https://www.allaboutjazz.com/isla-portico-quartet-real-world-review-by-chris-may.php
portico-quartet ...
1 - Paper Scissors Stone - 5:26
2 - The Visitor - 5:29
3 - Dawn Patrol - 5:58
4 - Line - 7:29
5 - Life Mask Interlude - 1:14
6 - Clipper - 6:30
7 - Life Mask - 7:15
8 - Isla - 5:00
9 - Shed Song (Improv No. 1) - 8:20
10 - Subo's Mental Meltdown - 5:47
Credits:
Double Bass – Milo Fitzpatrick
Drums, Piano, Marimba – Duncan Bellamy
Percussion, Idiophone [Hang Drum] – Nick Mulvey
Producer, Mixed By – John Leckie
Saxophone, Electronics – Jack Wyllie
Label: Real World Records – CDRWX174
Country: UK
Released: 06 Sep 2010
Genre: Jazz
Style: Avant-garde Jazz, Fusion
https://www.discogs.com/Portico-Quartet-Isla/release/2552947
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