Paradise Cinema: Returning, Dream review – walking a fine balance between chaos and euphoria | Music

London jazz outfit Portico Quartet have been a launch pad for side projects since their 2008 Mercury prize-nominated debut. Hang drum player Nick Mulvey departed in 2011 to become a successful singer-songwriter, while saxophonist Jack Wyllie is part of two projects: experimental electronica trio Szun Waves and the west African-influenced Paradise Cinema.

The latter’s 2020 debut, with Australian drummer Laurence Pike and Senegalese sabar and tama drummers Khadim Mbaye and Tons Sambe, artfully merged keening horns and synth pads with the fierce polyrhythms of mbalax music. The quartet’s follow-up, Returning, Dream, cements their atmospheric brand of percussive jazz.

Opening with the bubbling, pitch-shifting sounds of the tama (talking drum) on A Morning in the Near Future, the album progresses through soft flute melodies and layered synth loops on the title track and ambient numbers Tide and Nowhere, Home. Yet Paradise Cinema excel when they grow loud, on the sinuous saxophone of Python and the muscular Night Search. Puncturing the meandering focus of their slower numbers, Wyllie soars over the thunder of all three percussionists playing at once, walking a fine balance between chaos and euphoria.