Port-Royal - Post-dance on a planetary scale

The story of Port-Royal begins in Genoa in the very early 2000s, when the shared musical passion of Attilio Buzzone and Ettore Di Roberto laid the groundwork for compositions originally conceived for keyboards and guitar alone. With the formation of a proper five-piece band, they would soon broaden their original post-rock influences to embrace a varied approach to electronics.

Port-Royal's first artistic outing is the roughly twenty minutes of the EP Kraken, which, though still embryonic, already hints at some of the Genoese band's defining coordinates. The four tracks on Kraken, all bearing German titles, pair guitars and samplers to create music marked by prevailing melancholic, enveloping tones, as in the hushed incipit of "Gelassenheit" and the ending of "Regine Olsen" - yet at the same time, in the first case, pulsing with urgent electronic beats, and in the second, pervaded by a subtle rawness recalling the Arab Strap of "Philophobia", not by chance one of Attilio and Ettore's early loves. Port-Royal's take on electronics proves highly varied from the outset, as shown by the gentle flow of "Divertissment" and the elliptical progress of "Geworfenheit", underpinned by loops and vocal samples, as well as the hushed rarefactions that, scattered here and there across all four compositions, sketch the outlines of a sound that is already quite personal, and one that would soon become clearly recognizable.

Port-Royal's true breakthrough on a larger scale, however, is the album Flares, tellingly released on the British label Resonant, which gathers, in a complex form rich in variation, over two years of work aimed at filtering, through the band's particular sensibility, influences and musical experiences that are often quite different from one another. The ten instrumental tracks packed into the album's nearly eighty minutes range widely, in a single mental flow, among echoes of contemporary classical music, dilated, dreamlike atmospheres, traces of minimal electronica, and passages driven by more pronounced beats.

A sense of this record's richness and variety already comes through in the opening "Jeka", which begins with three simple piano notes in the manner of Sylvain Chauveau over a rarefied, enveloping synthetic texture, which soon takes over, establishing a suspended, ambient calm in the style of Labradford or Stars Of The Lid, barely pierced by a faint spoken voice in the distance.

Equally spectral is the incipit of the following track, "Spetsnaz/Paul Leni", rattled by a frenetic electronic percussion that, after first dissolving into a thick blanket of drone, picks back up on an almost danceable rhythm, before scattering, overwhelmed by impalpable ambient sounds and an unexpected guitar chord, a prelude to a hypnotic finale, pervaded by iterative interstellar signals floating atop a cosmic distortion. Far more impetuous is the journey of the over 12 minutes of "Karola Bloch", a track whose construction resembles some of the early productions of Mogwai – except that the guitars are replaced by a feverish electronic rhythm – which not only marks time but guides it through territories of subtle, glacial, deconstructed psychedelia.

If the frameworks of these tracks can already seem rather complex, the Genoese group fully expresses its far-from-ordinary compositional vitality, including from a conceptual standpoint, in the two tracks each divided into three movements, "Zobione" and "Flares": the first displays an articulated, shifting structure, while the composition that gives the album its title presents a circular progression with numerous variations on its theme.

"Zobione" unwinds from the sinister, dense psychedelic fog of its first part, which gradually clears until it dissolves into the warm, enveloping liquid rhythm of the second, marked by sweeping lyrical openings, among which one seems to glimpse Floydian atmospheres, revitalized by a delicate shadowy vein not so far removed from that of Sigur Rós; the third part, finally, is decidedly devoted to an electronic sound, built on the alternation between a driving beat and minimal cinematic passages.

The enchanting "Flares", meanwhile, sketches dreamy, enveloping melodies that chase one another across its three parts: the first (without doubt the most captivating track on the whole record), studded with romantic piano and languid guitars wrapped in electronic crackle, halfway between the atmospheres of Pan American and the Sigur Rós of "( )"; the second, marked by sounds of warm emotional crescendo and rich in romantic suggestions, among which one can glimpse a faint post-Canterbury psychedelia filtered through the experiences of bands such as Slowdive and, again, Sigur Rós; the third, shaped by ambient electronics, ideally closing the circle by reinterpreting once more the composition's central theme, which in the end briefly returns to the original form of the first part.

Although the album is, in conception and sonic settings, akin to the admirable works of The Album Leaf and labelmates Stafrænn Hákon and Blindfold, the multiplicity of stylistic and compositional references present in it makes it hard to pin down to any specific "genre", combining as it does electronic beats and guitar layering, static ambient scenery and emotional passages in constant flux.

After the pleasant revelation of their debut, Port-Royal spent two years amid numerous international experiences and collaborations, through which the groundwork was laid for their second work, preceded shortly before by an EP released on the Canadian label Chat Blanc under the title Honved, which, alongside a couple of recent compositions, includes reworkings of older material and remixes of two tracks from the first album.

The opening part of the EP is marked by liquid sounds, first stretched out across the two and a half minutes of "Stasi" and then layered over keyboard and synth textures of indefinite contours in "The Beat Of The Tiger", a track with a markedly descriptive character. The remaining three tracks are the fruit of collaborations and sonic reworkings: the first, "Song Of Megaptera", sees Port-Royal joined by Italian musician Andrea Penso, aka Selaxon Lutberg, in a series of controlled electronic manipulations tending toward glitch, which flow into the soft tones of an ethereal finale. Somewhat different are the two remixes entrusted to Landing and Millimetrik, who reinterpret the first two movements of "Zobione" according to their own respective sensibilities: Landing transforms the first part into a continuous ambient flow furrowed by drone, while Millimetrik almost upends the enveloping rhythm of the second, grafting onto it deep, dark urban sounds.

But if Honved amounts to a worthwhile preview, the full expression of the Genoese band's renewed artistic dimension comes from the album Afraid To Dance, which translates the same intersection of influences (post-rock, ambient, shoegaze) already present in "Flares" through a more pronounced electronic sensibility, exploring various facets of the potential of synths, sampling, and electronic filtering of every kind. Port-Royal's evolution lies above all in their compositional approach and in the way different passages unfold and gradually overlap across the album, and almost always within individual tracks as well.

This is clear from the very opening segment of the record, which, as a tribute to the band's Teutonic cultural references, starts out at Berlin Zoo ("Bahnhof Zoo"), pairing enveloping atmospheres, furrowed by disturbed frequencies and colourful sonic manipulations, with a deep electronic pulse that gives the track body and a sinuous momentum. Immediate confirmation that one of the standout traits of Afraid To Dance is a kaleidoscope of electronic refinement comes, after the brief prelude of persistent distortions in "Pauline Bokour", from the splendid "Anya: Sehnsucht", along which unfold moving urban visions and lingering Nordic traces, first woven into subtle, constantly shifting rhythmic patterns and then transformed into sketches of suspended, sinister landscapes, right up to the placid piano hint of the finale. Similar, indeed even more pronounced, traits appear in the nine minutes of "Deca-Dance", a track with immediate impact and an initially danceable rhythm that, built around a lashing electronic drum, generates a remarkable synthetic tension, softened only by clear yet twisted melodies, dissolving into an ethereal, spectral finale amid echoes of distant voices and languid ambient swells.

But that's not all: because if such a wealth of ideas would already be enough to fill entire albums, in the remaining tracks Port-Royal offer a series of variations on electronic themes ranging from the glitch ripples of "German Bigflies" to the slow electroacoustic textures that, in "Roliga Timmen (Longing Machines)", frame a central rhythmic surge and seductive, almost shoegaze-like movements. In this track and in the following "Internet Love", Port-Royal even let glimpses of song-form potential shine through, offering full proof of the warm, romantic heart of a music that doesn't give up its emotional potential but, filtering it through denser, more cerebral components, avoids the mere repetition of by-now predictable formulas.

Many other shifts in expressive register still reveal themselves in the subtle folds of an album that demonstrates the freshness and impressive effectiveness of the band's artistic formula, and the complete success of their choice to place emphasis on complex compositional structures, handled with such skill as to achieve a result of undeniably original character. It is indeed true that Port-Royal have stayed true to the roots of their artistic inspiration, but in Afraid To Dance they have developed and transformed those elements, not settling for being a worthy emulation of the bands already cited on their debut, but rather proving that their horizons are far, far broader.

Exactly one year after the release of Afraid To Dance, the Genoese band looks back, entrusting the tracks of Flares to notable artists of varied origin and background, each of whom reworks them according to their own style and sensibility.

Flared Up, in fact, is nothing other than a collection of remixes of the debut album, with almost all of its tracks subjected to reworkings that, without altering their structural characteristics, aim on one hand to emphasize their rhythmic components, and on the other to render their ambient elements more liquid and muffled.

The very choice of artists called in for the remixes testifies both to the versatility of the original tracks and to the widespread esteem Port-Royal have managed to earn with their work to date, given that alongside highly capable names known chiefly within underground electronic circles (as is the case, for instance, with D_rradio, F.S. Blumm, and Skyphone), the record also features artists who certainly need no introduction, such as Dialect, Stafraenn Hákon and Ulrich Schnauss.

Amid soft sounds and fragmented rhythms, Nordic accents and engrossing guitar crescendos, folktronic digressions and layered atmospheres, Flared Up – far from deserving suspicion of being a mere filler release meant only to keep the band's name alive – offers concrete, enjoyable testimony to the versatility of its compositions, revealing through these reinterpretations the potential already evident in previous works, and confirming, if further proof were needed, the international artistic credibility the Genoese band has deservedly earned.

A few months later, closing out a year dense with activity despite the absence of a new full-length, a split with young Greek artist George Mastrokostas, aka Absent Without Leave, was released in a limited edition of five hundred copies. Titled Magnitogorsk, it comprises eight tracks, evenly split between three unreleased tracks and a mutual remix from each artist.

The three unreleased tracks by the Genoa-based band carry dates ranging from 2003 to 2008, and are, in truth, only unreleased up to a point — at least where the nearly nine minutes of the opening "Ernst Bloch" are concerned, which recall Flares and, not coincidentally, the track "Karola Bloch", of which this seems to be the flip side of the coin: drier and more masculine, yet still studded with dense, gleaming sonorities as well as vocal field recordings, whose identity with the track on the debut album clearly establishes the connection. Although rhythmic incursions close to the style of "Afraid To Dance" are not lacking here either, the atmospheres come across as more expansive and nocturnal, embracing the almost ambient drift of "Severnaya" and the real-instrument inserts of "Agent 008 Codename Littlehorses (Aka The Lazybones)", which opens with an excellent piano (an element certainly deserving of further exploration) before an abrupt guitar eruption breaks in. Equally dense and elaborate is the reworking of "Zobione Pt. 2" into a darker, urban key.

A classic "minor release", Magnitogorsk confirms Port-Royal's passion for exploring new territories and collaborations based purely on a shared sensibility, utterly indifferent to any commercial logic, as shown by the choice of a limited edition on the small Greek label Sound In Silence.

Written over the course of a full three years, the following album Dying In Time embodies a gradual change of course, even as Port-Royal continue to fine-tune a sense of continuity, grafting new elements onto their now-established sonic fabric and bringing to the surface suggestions that before could only be glimpsed between the lines.

On one hand, the album meets the easy expectation of tighter rhythms, deep basslines and feverish rhythmic patterns; on the other, the shift towards a more direct, (more or less) danceable electronic formula is anything but a given, and is in fact made explicit only on sporadic occasions, almost always accompanied instead by a remarkable variety of solutions rooted in a fertile humus rich in shoegaze heritage and synthetic echoes, updated and channelled into a context in constant flux.

There's no shortage of driving, propulsive episodes, but even these end up letting dissolving textures and liquid swells surface, harking back to the band's origins or, at most, developing a peculiar (deca-)dance built on stretched-out textures, criss-crossed by lapping waves, synthetic surges, but also reverb, analogue sounds and warm organic brushstrokes.

The album indeed seems like something very close to the result of a puzzle-piece interplay between these fundamental elements, skilfully blended both to soften the renewed rhythmic emphasis and to enliven placid ambient passages, at times segmented — as in the case of "Exhausted Muse/Europe" — by sudden incursions of pronounced, luminescent synths and keyboards. Moreover, the inclusion in almost every track of ethereal vocal fragments traces substantial melodic lines, accentuating the dreamy yet at the same time extremely dense character of a work of pulsing, vital electronic music the likes of which is rarely heard — all the more so from a band with as eclectic a background as Port-Royal.

And it's certainly not everyone who can manage to translate, within the same album, shoegaze evanescence into the age of the laptop, while still preserving intense emotional embraces and tastefully reclaiming synthetic sounds filtered through the experiences of acts such as Boards Of Canada and Autechre. All of this, once again, with such ease that it can be appreciated even by those not normally accustomed to more "pushed" electronic sounds.

From the same sessions as Dying In Time come the four tracks on the EP Afterglow, released the year after the album in a small vinyl-only run on the Canadian label Sang D'Encre Fatory, run by Pascal Asselin aka Millimetrik, to whom the EP is also credited.

These are not, however, mere outtakes, since over the course of the EP's twenty minutes the integration — musical, and of imagery, as the track titles attest — between the two artists involved offers forays into deep sonorities, expressed both in their livelier guises and, above all, in their more liquid and spectral ones. From the modulations traced by the ebb and flow of the recognisable Port-Royal-style textures emerge compositions no less carefully crafted than those of "Dying In Time", but tangibly denser and darker — works from which one might even sense a reversal of the more overtly dance-oriented tendencies evident on the last two records and emphasised in live performances.

While the soft ambient gusts and filtered chords of "Frederic Back" find echoes in the Genoa band's earlier output, the murky atmospheres of the first part of "Petržalka" and the shadowy, trance-delic surrenders of "Pink" let frescoes of an almost entirely new unease surface — one that nonetheless harks back to the band's most intricate rock/shoegaze roots.

To celebrate a decade of activity, in 2011 the band gathered a substantial amount of hard-to-find material, plus a couple of unreleased tracks, into an imposing double CD (thirty-three tracks, over two and a half hours of music).

2000-2010: The Golden Age Of Consumerism is evenly split between original pieces and remixes. Far from being mere leftover material, it is instead a compendium of tracks "scattered" across EPs, collaborations and other limited releases; broadly speaking, this "parallel production" by port-royal comes across as more relaxed and more inclined towards ambient fascinations than what has been expressed in particular on their last two albums.

In this sense, confirmation can be found in the three tracks closing out the first CD, which bear witness to the most recent musical dispatches from the port-royal galaxy. These are the ethereal "Hans Kelsen" (released as part of an interesting compilation devoted to Italian electronic music by the popular netlabel Lost Children) and two previously unreleased tracks, though closely tied to the Dying In Time sessions, namely "Electric Tears (Nothing's Gonna Change)" and a "beefed-up" version, extended to over eleven minutes, of "Günther Anders", given last summer to the free-download compilation OndaDrops Vol.2.

The eighteen reworkings of other artists' tracks collected on the second CD instead offer a rich overview of the Genoa band's "dark side of the moon" — the one that had long since freed itself from "fear of dancing" — through manipulations that are at times quite brazen and dense with electronic pulses. Among the names whose tracks were reworked are Ladytron, Felix Da Housecat and Illuminated Faces, as well as Dag För Dag, D_rradio, Bitcrush, Absent Without Leave and Millimetrik — testament to the esteem and regard port-royal have earned "in the field", from Italy to Canada, from Russia to Greece.

After six years of waiting, 2015 sees the genesis of the new album, Where We Are Now.

“Death Of A Manifesto” is the pop track that port-royal can't quite pull off, a crude Moldovan-disco kind of dance number that comes across as a caricature. Next up is “Theodor W. Adorno”, whose intro sounds like a “Palazzo d’inverno” by Crono loop, and things start running smoothly again: they push the accelerator into anthemic mode, building progressively toward a peak. Their usual sonic trails are fired off in all directions here, alongside the climax in true post-rock fashion, the stasis of the second half, and the final reprise. 

The problem, perhaps more than in other instances, lies in the connecting pieces. The drone with a whiff of sacredness and Troum (“ruined” by the closing music boxes), the harmless, listless electropop of “Alma M”, “Whispering In the Dark” with its flourishes, or the early-port-royal-style closer “Heinsenberg” (a “Jeka” transfigured a decade later) all feel a bit pointless, lacking structure or any real specific weight. The grandeur trance of “Tallin” is what saves the day. 

This goes to show how the new port-royal struggle over short distances, or with anything that doesn't have a grandiose cut, yet they still do an excellent job on the longer tracks. The anthemic component plays no small part here, and “The Last Big Impezzo” marks a step forward much as “Balding Generation” once did: it opens like a “Zobione”, with effected guitars and an evanescence spreading into everything around you, the beat coming in razor-sharp, and without much preamble the climb begins in a hallucinated whirlwind of sounds coming from everywhere. Then the stasis, then once again the digital walls that resemble panzers. The same applies – though with less appeal – to “Karl Marx Song”.

This new port-royal record feels like one of those funfairs you visit on a grey November Sunday. With that grey, and that gorgeous edge of discomfort around it. The trouble is that a cheesy, tacky kick drum kicks in. They've taken a sideways step, and it's a misstep. Port-royal have shifted: where “Dying In Time” was the electro-gaze protest of their sound, Where Are You Now marks their drift into pop-electronic territory. The album's title feels almost prophetic of a question one could ask them: where are you, port-royal? The carousel, in short, stands still, and there's precious little to be happy about. 

Contributions by Alberto Asquini (“Where Are You Now”)

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