Portico Quartet

This is a positively dangerous album. The moves further into ambient and electronic based music have taken the fascinating half-classical/half-jazz sound of the band into deeply hypnotic and completely enveloping new territory. Ten minutes in to this and I was sitting slack-jawed and eyes glazed as my brain followed the myriad paths of 'Ruins' - my wife's description btw.

The reliance on the Hang drum is rather less this time out with a more even spread between the rhythmic and the melodic but where they do use it on 'Rubidium' it gives a core statement that the rest of the instruments can build and butt against.

The band seem to have brought sounds from all over the world and the overall feeling of the album is one of restlessly pacing and searching for new paths to move down before linking up and bringing the whole thing somewhere else entirely. It is never music that you can be at peace with but I simply could not put it away.
'Lacker Boo' feels like the aftermath of a thunderstorm while 'Steepless' features Cormelia (a London based Swede with a high and wistful vocal style) against drone and knitting needles. 'City of Glass' feels like a film noir soundtrack to a silent chase through LA streets - wonderful horns and skittering keys.
It is brilliant, in the same way that a diamond is brilliant - it shines and shimmers and your brain pulsates trying to follow all the different musical lights.

The Portico Quartet have come of age here but they have never sounded juvenile and this confirms what a wonderfully adult experience they are