Electric Babel Records

Portico Quartet are an instrumental band from London, UK. They are known for their use of the Hang, a modern percussion instrument. Their debut album, Knee-Deep in the North Sea, was nominated for the 2008 Mercury Prize and was Time Out’s Jazz, Folk and World album of the year 2007. The group consists of Duncan Bellamy (drums and electronics), Jack Wyllie (saxophones and keyboards), Milo Fitzpatrick (electric and double-bass) and Keir Vine (keyboards). Their name comes from when one of their early gigs was rained off in Italy and they ended up playing under a portico. All of the groups album covers, artwork and graphic design is done by the drummer, Duncan Bellamy, who has a degree in Fine Art from Central Saint Martins.

The OverGround Collective is an 18-piece band put together by the Portuguese composer Paulo Dias Duarte. The project is a result of Paulo’s obsessive research on improvisation and its relation with pre-composed material. After shadowing many improvisers in the London scene, Paulo has put together a group of players, with very distinctive improvisational languages and techniques, in a project where he uses their different approaches to improvisation as compositional tools, creating a very eclectic musical landscape where the improviser itself is a part of the score.