Once a jazz-laden quartet headlining world music festivals, newly regenerated trio Portico have shed not just a member but vast layers of sound on new album 'Living Fields', a notable and accessible triumph.
They've always been nocturnal, dragging ambient jazz into hallucinogenic corners, but where past experiments have blossomed with intricate intelligence, 'Living Fields' buries it cleverly underneath the shadows and vocalists. Less intrigue and more resolution.
The jaw-shuddering, sub-bass weighted opener 'Living Fields' grows into a thundering statement of intent. A flashing synth line spins into a repetitive cyclone and Jono McCleery is abducted, lifted from his destitute, moonlit path and turned celestial. His echo-draped falsetto becomes our aurora borealis – perfectly apt, for this is a record that shape-shifts in much the same way.
With four tracks to his name, McCleery leads the featured trail followed by two spots from alt-J's Joe Newman and Jamie Woon's moment on album finale 'Memory of Newness'. They're all soul boys with a fetish for eye-wincing highs and, as such, their voices serve a collective purpose; not just thematically – shared tales of falling behind, floating or forgetting – but in the mellow warmth they supply to the album's entrancing yet monochrome hallways.
Joe Newman can't help but stick out. His lost choirboy charm and nasal wordsmith patter falls into character across 'Atacama,' which sees the R&B ghosts of The Invisible glide over a sparse landscape of strobing percussion and clattering industrial twitches.
'Dissolution' is the only instrumental on the album, an elegiac swoop of long, sorrowful synths etched with muted scribbles of studio noise. Just a minute and a half, it's sandwiched between two of the album's most soulful moments – 'Colour Fading' and 'Bright Luck', both voiced by the Buckley-like ache of McCleery.
It's enough to keep our head in the game – or rather, the skies. Stay up here, it says. Whatever you do, do not come down.
8/10
Words: Kim Hillyard
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