Name: Terrain
Brand: Portico Quartet

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Bonus disc: No

Catalogue number

GONDCD042

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Download code: No

Rough Trade Exclusive

Rough Trade Exclusive: No

Extended format

Extended format: No

Format detail

Format Music GB

Limited edition

Release date

2021-05-28

Signed copies

Signed copies: No

Supplier GB

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Standard:20

UPC / Barcode

5050580753778

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Total Cap

1 / CD / Extended format: No / Rough Trade Exclusive: No / Signed copies: No

Artist

Portico Quartet

Genre GB

Jazz

Label GB

Gondwana Records

Albums of the Year 2021

Gondwana Records is an independent record label based in Manchester, UK. Founded by Matthew Halsall in 2008, the label has gained recognition for its diverse roster of talented artists and exceptional music releases.

Over the years, Gondwana Records has been a platform for renowned musicians such as Dwight Trible, GoGo Penguin, John Ellis, Mammal Hands, Nat Birchall, Noya Rao, Phil France and Portico Quartet. Each artist brings their unique style and musical expertise to the label's catalogue.

With a commitment to showcasing innovative and boundary-pushing music, Gondwana Records continues to be at the forefront of the independent music scene. Whether you're a jazz enthusiast or simply appreciate good music across genres, Gondwana Records offers a captivating selection that will leave you wanting more.

Portico Quartet have defied categorisation over the course of six studio albums. From their 2007 Mercury Music Prize nominated breakthrough ‘Knee-Deep in the North Sea’ through to the longform minimalist inspired ‘Terrain’ in 2021.

Their new electronic driven album Monument shows the band at their most direct, with a streamlined, rhythmic sound. Full of precisely sculpted ideas combining human touch with electronic efficiency, ‘Monument’ displays the acclaimed widescreen minimalists at their best.

Vinyl variants, bonus material and signed editions exclusively available from Rough Trade.

Portico Quartet announce Terrain, a three-part suite drawing on American minimalism and ambient music alongside their own rich heritage as they explore new musical vistas 

When Duncan Bellamy and Jack Wyllie – the driving force behind Portico Quartet got together in their East London studio in May 2020 and started work on the music that would become their new album, the world, or most of it, was in the midst of the first lockdown. The unique impact of the events of 2020 became the backdrop to their time composing and recording; causing them to take stock, re-think, and plot a new musical path.

Indian novelist Arundhati Roy expressed the sense of grief and rupture from the pandemic as "a portal, a gateway between one world and the next", and as they created the music that would become Terrain they were drawn towards longer, slowly unfolding pieces, which are perhaps the most artistically free and also the most beautiful they have ever made.

These are compositions more in the lineage of Line and Shed Song (Isla/2009), Rubidium (Portico Quartet/2012) and Immediately Visible (Memory Streams/2019). Wyllie expands: "We've always had this side of the band in some form. The core of it is having a repeated pattern, around which other parts move in and out, and start to form a narrative. We used to do longer improvisations not dissimilar to this around the time of our second record Isla. On Terrain we've really dug into it and explored that form. I suppose there are obvious influences such as American minimalism, but I was particularly inspired by the work of Japanese composer Midori Takada. Her approach, particularly on 'Through the Looking Glass', where she moves through different worlds incorporating elements of minimalism with non-Western instruments and melodies were at the front of my mind when writing this music".

Terrain I, II &amp; III are all subtly different, but a short rhythmic motif that repeats is the starting point in all three movements. There is a sense of a shared journey to all these pieces, they move through different worlds, with a sense of horizontal movement that lends the music real momentum. Terrain I was the first piece they worked on and it started with a hang drum pattern, improvised by Bellamy, who added cymbals and synthesiser. From there on it grew, Wyllie adding saxophone, another synthesiser section, strings. For Bellamy "It felt more like filmmaking than music making, a bricolage of conflicting, shifting signs, subtle tension and multiple narratives. Andrei Tarkovsky's Mirror and British artist John Akomfrah's incredible Handsworth Songs were pivotal points of reference for me." Wyllie expands the point. "There is a sense of conversation between us both, in that someone presents a musical idea, the other person responds to it with something else, which would then be responded to again... until it feels finished. These responses are often consonant with each other but there is also a dissonance to some of this work. The music slowly evolves through these shared conversations."

It is this sense of dialogue, both between the composers, and between tranquillity and a subtly unsettling melancholy, that makes Terrain such a powerful statement. One that speaks to both our interior and exterior worlds, to our own personal landscape, to our Terrain.

Terrain

Music GB

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