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KOKO of Camden was full to capacity last night with
Portico Quartet appreciators, for the official launch gig for their new album
Isla released on 19 October. According to their good mate and fellow artist
Jamie Woon, who I bumped into at the show, there were ticket touts hanging around outside the venue. As he quite rightly observed, the presence of such is surely a sign that the band has reached a new level of popularity.
Making a very welcome return to the UK live scene, the four-piece have
It’s something of a cliché now to say a band defies categorisation but the sonic mavericks of Sankorfa are only too worthy of this observation. Formed in 2004, Guildhall School of Music alumnae Michael Allen, Zands Duggan, Ruth Gomez and Scott Wilson are the four multi-instrumentalists behind the band, who borrow their name from an African word meaning ‘looking back to go forward’.
Their energetic live performances, as demonstrated at the Borderline venue in London last Friday consist of these highly skilled percussionists swapping and navigating around various instruments to produce strange soundscapes that are at once lush and stark.