Monument

Duncan Bellamy and Jack Wyllie had a more productive lockdown than most in 2020. The drummer and saxophonist pair, who make up the London-based jazz and electronic group Portico Quartet, recorded two albums in only a matter of months. The first, Terrain, arrived in May 2021 and is a three-track, minimalist exploration of melodic loops and textural atmospheres. It is followed by Monument, a concise encapsulation of the Portico Quartet sound. Where Terrain dug into lengthy meditative compositions, Monument traverses everything from the driving groove of “Impressions” to the krautrock-referencing “Ultraviolet” and the strings-laden, cinematic melodies of “On the Light.” “There isn’t much wastage in Monument,” saxophonist Wyllie tells Apple Music. “It feels like this sculptural, composed exploration of our sound and evolution over the years.” Read on for his thoughts on the album, track by track.

“Opening”
“Our process generally works with us individually building ideas over the course of a month and then in the following month we work together to make them into tunes. This track began with an idea that Duncan had and that I added some sax and synth to, as well as recorded strings. We did a lot of studio work on it afterwards by running it back through delays to give it a sense of space and ambience.”

“Impressions”
“This is a recognizably Portico Quartet tune, featuring the hang drum, which is a key part of the identity of the band. It's similar to the track ‘Ruins’ from our third album, but this is more up front and direct. There's a nice contrast between the rhythmic groove that is quite big and then the sax, which is played very gently. There's a load of vocal samples that we sang on too in the background. All of that helps make up its ambient textures.”

“Ultraviolet”
“This is contrastingly quite different from our earlier music. It's got a krautrock groove to it, as well as that pitched saxophone at the start and the Prophet synth line that Duncan's playing. At this point in the record, we felt like you need to have a bit of propulsion, since you've come out of the intro into something quite up front and now you want to keep on driving through.”

“Ever Present”
“Duncan wrote the piano part, and I liked the simplicity of it. We put it back through some modulated reverb to give it a woozy effect, and then my saxophone melody references our earlier work with its melodic economy. Duncan's playing bass on it as well—it’s quite busy underneath the melody, but it fits together nicely.”

“Gateway”
“We didn't have any interludes on the album at first, but after we sent it in to the record label, they said it felt slightly too full-on and needed a bit of space to breathe. We had already written this hang drum melody and the one on ‘Portal,’ which we then slid into the track listing. It gives the album a different pace and allowed it to be an easier listen.”

“Monument”
“This started with a vocal loop, in a similar feel to an earlier track of ours called ‘Endless.’ I added a very simple melodic sax sound to the loop that is then quite heavily manipulated through effects pedals. The whole song is supposed to feel like a journey, where the listener is taken through these different sonic worlds and ends up in an entirely new space.”

“A.O.E”
“The connection between the tracks and their titles is sometimes so abstract for us—we just go with whatever feels like it works. We spend so long doing them; it could take three months to write the album and three months to do the sequencing and titles. This stands for ‘Age of Enlightenment,’ since Duncan and I were both reading an article about it at the time. It's one of my favorite tunes, since I really like how it cuts between these two sections, switching from electronic drums to acoustic drums and then the soaring sax and cello melody.”

“Warm Data”
“After we've separately worked with each other's ideas, we usually go to a recording studio and turn them into pieces of music by rerecording everything. With ‘Warm Data,’ we jammed most of it in a studio that had a Steinway piano. We improvised along to a groove that Duncan had already written, and then after we'd recorded it, we chopped it up and made it more coherent.”

“Portal”
“We probably could have turned ‘Gateway’ and ‘Portal’ into more fleshed-out tunes of their own, but they fit on this album perfectly as interludes. They are both hang drum melodies processed through reverb and delay. They're functional tracks, but they are also essential to the listening experience of the record as a whole.”

“On the Light”
“This is classic Portico territory. Duncan initially wrote the drum and bass grooves and then I built the melodies on top. It's a really nice way to finish the record, since the strings come in at the end and elevate it into a cinematic feel. It was lovely to have the strings players Simmy Singh and Francesca Ter-Berg in the studio with us, helping with the arrangements. It's a celebratory way to end the album.”