Pre-order of Terrain. You get 1 track now (streaming via the free Bandcamp app and also available as a high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more), plus the complete album the moment it’s released.
Immediate download of [numtracks]-track album in your choice of high-quality MP3, FLAC, or just about any other format you could possibly desire.
Purchasable with gift card
releases May 28, 2021
£9GBP or more
Record/Vinyl + Digital Album
Including Printed Inner Sleeve. Artwork and Design by Duncan Bellamy for Veil Projects
Includes digital pre-order of Terrain.
You get 1 track now
(streaming via the free Bandcamp app
and also available as a high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more), plus the
complete album the moment it’s released.
shipping out on or around May 28, 2021
Purchasable with gift card
£22GBPor more
Record/Vinyl + Digital Album
Including Printed Inner Sleeve. Artwork and Design by Duncan Bellamy for Veil Projects
Includes digital pre-order of Terrain.
You get 1 track now
(streaming via the free Bandcamp app
and also available as a high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more), plus the
complete album the moment it’s released.
shipping out on or around May 28, 2021
edition of 50
5 remaining
Purchasable with gift card
£20GBP
Record/Vinyl + Digital Album
Including Printed Inner Sleeve. Artwork and Design by Duncan Bellamy for Veil Projects
Includes digital pre-order of Terrain.
You get 1 track now
(streaming via the free Bandcamp app
and also available as a high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more), plus the
complete album the moment it’s released.
shipping out on or around May 28, 2021
Purchasable with gift card
£20GBPor more
Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album
Artwork and Design by Duncan Bellamy for Veil Projects
Includes digital pre-order of Terrain.
You get 1 track now
(streaming via the free Bandcamp app
and also available as a high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more), plus the
complete album the moment it’s released.
shipping out on or around May 28, 2021
Purchasable with gift card
£13GBPor more
T-Shirt/Apparel
Earth Positive 100% Organic Cotton t-shirt
Earth Positive garments are carbon neutral, environmentally friendly and produced with low impact farming
Limited edition T-shirt designed by Duncan Bellamy and available exclusively on Bandcamp.
shipping out on or around May 28, 2021
edition of 60
Purchasable with gift card
£20GBPor more
Limited Transparent Orange Vinyl, Signed Art Print & Postcard Bundle
Record/Vinyl + Digital Album
Limited edition deluxe bundle:
Signed B2 (500 x 707mm) Art-Print - Hand printed on premium Naturalis 250gsm art paper. Designed and signed by the band’s drummer Duncan Bellamy and hand numbered.
Limited Orange vinyl edition of Terrain LP. Includes free download in WAV, FLAC or MP3
2 x Terrain Postcards.
Includes digital pre-order of Terrain.
You get 1 track now
(streaming via the free Bandcamp app
and also available as a high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more), plus the
complete album the moment it’s released.
Portico Quartet announce Terrain, a three-part suite drawing on American minimalism and ambient music alongside their own rich heritage as they explore new musical vistas
When Duncan Bellamy and Jack Wyllie – the driving force behind Portico Quartet got together in their East London studio in May 2020 and started work on the music that would become their new album, the world, or most of it, was in the midst of the first lockdown. The unique impact of the events of 2020 became the backdrop to their time composing and recording; causing them to take stock, re-think, and plot a new musical path.
Indian novelist Arundhati Roy expressed the sense of grief and rupture from the pandemic as "a portal, a gateway between one world and the next", and as they created the music that would become Terrain they were drawn towards longer, slowly unfolding pieces, which are perhaps the most artistically free and also the most beautiful they have ever made.
These are compositions more in the lineage of Line and Shed Song (Isla/2009), Rubidium (Portico Quartet/2012) and Immediately Visible (Memory Streams/2019). Wyllie expands: "We've always had this side of the band in some form. The core of it is having a repeated pattern, around which other parts move in and out, and start to form a narrative. We used to do longer improvisations not dissimilar to this around the time of our second record Isla. On Terrain we've really dug into it and explored that form. I suppose there are obvious influences such as American minimalism, but I was particularly inspired by the work of Japanese composer Midori Takada. Her approach, particularly on 'Through the Looking Glass', where she moves through different worlds incorporating elements of minimalism with non-Western instruments and melodies were at the front of my mind when writing this music".
Terrain I, II & III are all subtly different, but a short rhythmic motif that repeats is the starting point in all three movements. There is a sense of a shared journey to all these pieces, they move through different worlds, with a sense of horizontal movement that lends the music real momentum. Terrain I was the first piece they worked on and it started with a hang drum pattern, improvised by Bellamy, who added cymbals and synthesiser. From there on it grew, Wyllie adding saxophone, another synthesiser section, strings. For Bellamy "It felt more like filmmaking than music making, a bricolage of conflicting, shifting signs, subtle tension and multiple narratives. Andrei Tarkovsky's 'Mirror' and British artist John Akomfrah's incredible 'Handsworth Songs' were pivotal points of reference for me." Wyllie expands the point. "There is a sense of conversation between us both, in that someone presents a musical idea, the other person responds to it with something else, which would then be responded to again... until it feels finished. These responses are often consonant with each other but there is also a dissonance to some of this work. The music slowly evolves through these shared conversations."
It is this sense of dialogue, both between the composers, and between tranquillity and a subtly unsettling melancholy, that makes Terrain such a powerful statement. One that speaks to both our interior and exterior worlds, to our own personal landscape, to our Terrain.
Wide-screen minimalists Portico Quartet have created their own singular, cinematic sound over the course of six studio
albums.. Their new album, Terrain, (28 May 2021) unfolds slowly over three movements. Drawing on ambient music and American minimalism, it is one of the most artistically free and beautiful they have ever recorded....more
With every album Mammal Hands both evolve their style and implement new styles - really nice work once again! Gondwana Records is always a good choice for jazz dudes. StrangeFlow
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