Portico - Living Fields (2015)

Mercury nominated London group Portico Quartet resurface with a new lineup and their debut as a trio on Ninja Tune. Renamed as just Portico, Jack Wyllie, Duncan Bellamy, and Milo Fitzpatrick venture further away from the band’s jazz beginnings and towards a mellow electropop sound with vocal narratives - for which they invited Jamie Woon, Joe Newman of alt-J and label mate Jono McCleery. The latter appears on the majority of the tracks: his falsetto vocals dominate the album’s cinematic soundscapes, constructed from moving minor key arpeggios and evocative string pads. This spirit is embodied on the opening title track, which layers McCleary’s melismatic singing, sparse percussion and evolving synth cascades.