Portico Quartet

The British band Portico Quartet (or simply Portico, for a brief period) are among the most emblematic acts of the nu jazz scene that developed in and around London from the mid-2000s onward. With their stylistic shifts, label changes and lineup swaps, they're also a handy mirror of that scene: starting out in 2007 with "Knee Deep In The North Sea" on the roster of Peter Gabriel's Real World, with a luminous, acoustic chamber-jazz sound, after the captivating "Isla" (2009) and "Portico Quartet" (2012) they moved to Ninja Tune, completing a shift toward an ambient/minimalist take on their formula. "Living Fields" (2015) and then the two volumes of "Art In The Age Of Automation" (2017, 2018) saw them reach a mature, abstract yet evocative style, deeply tied to the kind of "listening" electronica associated with idm, yet still able to retain that organic, "live-played" feel long embodied by the Cinematic Orchestra. 2017 also marks their move to Gondwana Records, the label synonymous with nu jazz (GoGo Penguin, Mammal Hands, Hania Rani), which would go on to make Portico Quartet headliners of its tenth-anniversary concert, held at the Round House in London in November 2018.