Paradise Cinema's self-titled album is Mezzanine's pick for 'Album of the Year'. In a shortlist that featured the pinpoint polyrhythms of Beatrice Dillon's debut full length 'Workaround', the organic jazz of Makaya Mcraven's 'Universal Beings E&F Sides' and Alabaster DePlume's therapeutic 'To Cy and Lee: Instrumentals Volume One', it has prevailed as our top choice. Neil Housego met with Portico Quartets Jack Wyllie to discuss the album, Senegal and the enduring influence of Jon Hassell.

In what has been an unprecedented year full of uncertainty, and struggles on a global scale, the healing, inspirational force of music has been critical. By bringing together the mbalax rhythms of Khadim Mbaye and Tons Sambe with his signature saxophone and etched atmospherics, Jack Wyllie has crafted an album that evokes phantom memories and a unified world. A captured mirage of posterity and imagined, brighter futures. Wyllie is a warm and engaging interviewee. Dressed in a casual blue sweatshirt with his mic’ed up piano in the background he relaxes into the questions over Zoom on a cool December evening.

For me, one of the most striking things about your Paradise Cinema record is the unique sense of place and atmosphere. Is that something you're consciously aware of and was it always your aim to create something that invokes this?

Yeah, especially with the Paradise Cinema record, you know there's an undeniable Senegalese influence on it that comes from Khadim (Mbaye) and Tons (Sambe) mbalax music. It's so specific you don't find it that much outside of even the north of Senegal. It's really focused and is the national music of Senegal. I wanted to make something that connected to what I experienced in the seven months I was living there, something that was deeply connected to my experience. And so, bringing Khadim and Tons and fusing that with my stuff as well, really grounds it. I suppose in some ways it's in a place, and it's got a real Senegalese influence. But then also it's not just Senegalese music. It occupies a space that is slightly outside of anything definite. 

I think the beauty of the record really comes through in the way you've managed to fuse these influences and make them sit seamlessly. Creating a new space that feels familiar but also distinct. 

Yeah, definitely part of me didn't want to make a Senegalese record it all. But I didn't want to make something that I would just do if I was in London. I suppose it's about finding this new thing in-between the worlds. With the three of us coming together you've got something that's very much its own thing, in its own space. But I also suppose a lot of it comes around through circumstance. It's quite unusual for someone to just go and spend seven months in Senegal for a music project. You know, my girlfriend was working out there, conducting field research. That's the reason why I was staying there. 

Interestingly, you saw this as an opportunity to express something new as a musician. Taking in your circumstance and processing it creatively. Were you aiming to innovate and create something new, or was it more of an experimental process? 

It's was a bit of each really. I always like to make something that sounds kind of unique, like I think most musicians do. I always aim to make something original, new and exciting. But then, like you said, at the same time, the circumstance allowed me to do that. So it all came together quite nicely. And I think everything is original up to a point. But you're always building on another bit of work from other artists. For example, Jon Hassel was a considerable influence. That idea of Fourth World music, and that this stuff doesn't just exist in one space. It has its own identity...that was a huge influence. But it's also about me building on a lot of work I've done previously and bringing it together at that moment. 

 Your work with Luke Abbot and Laurence Pike seems to live in that zone. Do you feel that it's essential to have these side projects, and that gives you a chance to play and experiment more openly? Yeah, definitely, Szun Waves is all improvised, so it's a really different side of what I do. Portico is actually very labour intensive and quite composed. Even in the bits where I'm improvising, it can have a predetermined structure. There isn't any notation, but there are structures and an aim. But in Szun Waves every take is a blank canvas, more or less. There might be a few chords and a few core sequences, and maybe I might have a rough idea of a melody, but aside from that, it's all about playing and responding in the moment. I was really missing that in Portico.

An example is 'Living Fields', which I enjoyed making, but you know it's very 'produced' and polished. I wasn't really incorporating any of my saxophone playing in that album, let alone any improvisation. So being able to work with Luke, on our EP and then the Szun Waves project, was really refreshing. And I find it really stimulating, you know? I guess it kind of reignited my love of improvisation and the raw enjoyment I get from playing the saxophone. The great thing is that it eventually folds itself back into the Portico stuff and in turn has influenced what I wanted to do with Paradise Cinema. 

It sounds really important that you find collaborators that you can bounce off you and grow with?

Yes definitely. Because like I was saying Portico has got this identity and it quite hard to stray too far outside of that. It means I can't put everything into that. I think it is too much to push everything into one place anyway. Being able to split stuff off into different projects is really helpful. It's stimulating working with other people as well. Getting ideas from other people and listening to music that they might be into keeps everything fresh. And then when I come back to Portico after doing Szun Waves, it's like it was really fun to do, and vice versa. 

There's such value in avoiding falling into a rut and working to a formula. I know this is pretty impossible to answer, but do you have a favourite project that you've worked on? 

I don't know (laughs) I mean, I like all of them in there own way. They've all got their own individuality that I find difficult to compare. I like Szun Waves because I'm improvising with real freedom and Paradise Cinema feels, you know, very personal. The relationship that developed between myself, Khadim and Tons as well as my connection to Senegal feels really special. And there's Portico which is very is quite detailed and meticulous. There's something to the production values that I really like engaging with too. Each project has it's own attraction for me. 

There seems to be different processes and approaches that ends up sculpting the direction of each album or EP. Do you ever try and define a project through its sound design and palette? Or is that again something that evolves?

Yeah, definitely there is to some extent a level at which it just exists through circumstance and also a level where I make very conscious decisions. As a starting point, 'Knee Deep in the North Sea', Nick and Duncan had brought these Hang Drums, which became an integral part of the sound, with my sax and Milo's double bass.

You were busking at that time? 

Yeah, we'd busked all around Europe that way, and that really became our sound palette. We didn't really think about it. But then I think we began to consciously change it for our following records. We brought in more influences from electronic and ambient music as well. That was because we were becoming more interested in that world and wanted it to reflect in our music. We were adapting to help make the music feel relevant to us. With Portico we've been gradually tweaking. So it's always been a bit of a dialogue between what's naturally there and consciously deciding and really crafting it.

You mentioned Jon Hassell. Has his approach to sound design influenced you specifically?  

Well on the Paradise Cinema stuff there's definitely been a big Jon Hassell influence. I really like his latest two records as well as the classic stuff. Pentimento Volumes 1 and 2. First time I heard them I didn't think it was as good as his early stuff. However, I ended up revisiting them one night and the sonic space floored me. I think it was the second time I listened to it with some big headphones on and I was like, 'Wow'. I think we'd got back at like 2 in the morning or something after a couple of drinks, and it was amazing, like really, really impressive. Doing that at around eighty years old... extraordinary. So in terms of creating aural spaces, he's a massive influence. It might not be sound design literally in terms of the minutiae, but the space and vibe definitely. 

It really is a testament to his craft that he has managed to stay so relevant and inspiring. A lot has changed throughout his career, and it seems that sort of longevity might be harder to achieve nowadays. Musicians now have to contend so much with their image and perception via social media. How do you navigate this stuff because it's so difficult? 

I'm not great at it! The label sometimes asks me to do a couple of posts to help the promotion of a record. Actually for the Paradise Cinema project Duncan (Portico) did the artwork for the record and the teasers and stuff. So I posted a few of those bits and some photos that my girlfriend took in Senegal. I just post them up, and that's it really. I don't do any live streams, I probably should!

It's interesting to think that you almost have that guilt that you should be doing more! It seems that it's another skill that a musician needs to employ in order to gain exposure and sometimes it can relegate the actual music to second place. It's really difficult. 

Yeah, I think it's a tough balance. The people who do well out of it must really spend a lot of time on it. They put a lot of effort into their videos and live streams. And yeah, sometimes you feel like that almost becomes more of the actual artist's output. It becomes more about their image, rather than their art. But it's the modern world. The core for me, which sounds a bit old school now, is to just make really good music! That's always been my focus. 

Paradise Cinema's self-titled debut is Out Now on Gondwana Records.