PORTICO began life busking on the South Bank, but founding member Jack Wyllie admits they wouldn’t be able to do so now with their new electronic-influenced album Living Fields.

“It would take a generator and a sound system to play there now,” he laughs.

Having shrunk to a trio, the former Portico Quartet have turned their backs on the past and heavily investigated electronica on their first release under their new name.

When Wyllie spoke to The Guide the band had only played five shows in its new line-up so far.

“There was definitely a sense that people didn’t know what was going on,” he admits. “People enjoyed the shows, but there were also a few people who were quite baffled.”

The buskers turned Mercury Music Prize nominees had initially built their instrumental sound around Wyllie’s saxophone and the percussive hang, which the band had picked up at a festival.

After second album Isla and following the departure of founder member Nick Mulvey in 2011– now a critically acclaimed singer-songwriter – the band recruited percussionist Keir Vine, and ditched the hang to begin exploring electronica.

With the departure of Vine in 2014, and the elimination of the Quartet section of their name, the trio began the difficult build-up to their first album as Portico.

“About this time last year we were thinking about stopping it,” admits Wyllie.

“We had been trying to write music for about a year at that point. We decided to give it one more go – and decided to do something completely new. We didn’t want to be so restricted by what we had done before. It freed us up to write – before we were trying to write in the history of our old work. It was really liberating.”

The biggest change to Portico’s sound is the addition of vocals replacing Wyllie’s lead saxophone lines.

The album revolves around three guest vocalists, all of whom had close links to the band – Joe Newman of alt-J, Wyllie’s one-time neighbour in Southampton; former housemate Jamie Woon and the Woon-recommended Jono McCleery who will join the band on tour.

“The singers provided that line through the music,” says Wyllie, whose stage role now finds him creating soundscapes and ambient textures on the synthesiser rather than playing the saxophone.

“Writing and developing lyrics was a really massive change. The sound has changed – adding the saxophone now would be a little out of place. I still play it in other projects, but it’s not quite right for Portico.”

When it came to creating a lyrical theme for the album, which was released on Ninja Tune last month, the band turned to a documentary Nostalgia For The Light.

“My girlfriend was studying for an MA in anthropology and the film was part of that,” says Wyllie, who discovered bandmate Duncan Bellamy had also watched the highly acclaimed Chilean film by director Patricio Guzman. Set 10,000 feet above sea level in the Atacama Desert, the documentary follows both the astronomers who travel to see the edges of the universe, and the relatives of Chilean political prisoners searching below them for the preserved remains of their loved ones who disappeared during the 1973 revolution.

“We used it as part of a mood board to give the singers something to bounce off,” says Wyllie. “It wasn’t so much about the specifics of the film – there is a lot about South American politics which doesn’t relate to us. It was the universal concepts of things falling apart or disintegrating, and new life being born. It was a bit of an allegory for the band.”

Anyone expecting to hear music from Portico Quartet’s Mercury-nominated calling card Knee Deep In The North Sea is likely to be disappointed by this Brighton visit, which will be largely focused on the band’s new direction.

“Hopefully now the album is out people won’t be so surprised,” says Wyllie.

“We have got a lot of gigging coming up – if it all goes well we will see where we are. I’m up for doing some more.”

Support from Snow Goose.

Duncan Hall

Doors 7pm, tickets £15. Call 01273 606312.