Altsounds — U.K.'s Portico Quartet are earning high praise for their new album, 'Isla' (Real World Records), as the band prepares to kick off its first major North American tour later this month (details below). Watch them recording at Abbey Road Studios for gli... more info

Altsounds — Portico Quartet's 'Isla' is out this week on Real World Records and earned a rave in the LA Times: Album review: Portico Quartet's 'Isla' | Pop & Hiss | Los Angeles Times (http://bit.ly/aDlLxl) Giving the album 3/4 stars, critic Chris Barton writes ... more info

Guardian Music — Paul Morley introduces the Mercury prize nominees and winners that make up his prizes and awards discussion panelAfter a couple of decades, there are a couple of hundred acts to choose from when it comes to assembling a panel to discuss what it was l... more info

Guardian Music — Paul Morley brings Ms Dynamite, M People's Mike Pickering and the Portico Quartet's Jack Wylie into the Guardian studios to talk about how being nominated for (and in the case of M People and Dynamite, winning) the Mercury Music Prize affected their ... more info

L.A. Times - Pop & Hiss — There’s no way to talk about the Portico Quartet without first talking about the hang drum. A UFO-shaped oddity that looks like two welded-together woks after a couple of well-placed whacks with a ball-peen hammer, its percolating, chiming pulse pr... more info

All About Jazz — "SINGULAR AND TALENTED" (TIME OUT LONDON) PORTICO QUARTET ADD DATES TO FIRST EVER NORTH AMERICAN TOUR UK's Portico Quartet have added new dates to their first ever North American tour supporting Isla (Aug 31/ Real World Records), including stops in ... more info

Guardian Music — As announcements go, this year's Mercury prize nominations didn't exactly set my world on fire (nor that of Alexis Petridis, who blogged on the announcement). Mumford & Sons, Laura Marling, Corinne Bailey Rae, I Am Kloot ... I guess the judges liked ... more info

Guardian Music — Mostly Jazz Festival Afterparties, BirminghamIt's a big day for music lovers in Birmingham. In Digbeth, The Rainbow team hold the summer edition of their street parties today, with DJs Erol Alkan, Fake Blood, Breakage, Jakwob, Tomb Crew, Riva Starr, ... more info

Altsounds — What to make of Portico Quartet? The young, UK-based, Mercury-prize-nominated band has been compared to everyone from Radiohead to Steve Reich to Moondog. They've been called "genuinely innovative" (The Observer), "powerfully atmospheric" (The ... more info

Guardian Music — The complete list of the acts appearing at this year's festivalPyramid stageFriday 25 JuneU2Dizzee RascalVampire WeekendSnoop DoggWillie NelsonCorinne Bailey RaeFemi KutiTBA Saturday 26 JuneMuseScissor SistersSeasick SteveJackson BrowneLightning See... more info