Re-release of Portico Quartet's 2008 Mercury Music Prize nominated album, remixed by John Leckie and featuring three bonus tracks.

Portico Quartet, still in their early twenties, formed five years ago from two sets of school friends ? standing out with their fresh, unclichéd resynthesis and reinvention of music that's both pleasingly familiar and thrillingly new, like World Music from the future. The mix of ethereal saxophone, flying saucer-like Hang (imagine an otherworldly steel drum), clattering drums and earthy double-bass gives their music it's inimitable, beautiful sound. Whilst Portico Quartet's largely intuitive music references jazz and African music it's the Hang inspired trance-like repetitive patterns that propel the band into stranger pastures: invoking Philip Glass and Steve Reich's gamelan inspired minimalism.

The line-up of the band is Duncan Bellamy (drums), Milo Fitzpatrick (double bass), Nick Mulvey (hang and percussion) and Jack Wyllie (soprano, tenor saxophones and electronics). From a grassroots start in 2005, busking on the South Bank of London's Thames, their reputation spread swiftly. In 2007 Knee-Deep In The North Sea was released. This was a turning point: the album attracted attention from DJs, bloggers and critics of every stripe, and was nominated for the 2008 Mercury Music Prize. Knee-Deep was also Time Out's Jazz, Folk and World music album of the year for 2007. The album has been remixed by John Leckie (The Stone Roses, Radiohead, Muse and producer of Portico Quartet's 2009 album, Isla.