Nick Mulvey

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Nick Mulvey is one of the UK's brightest upcoming musical lights. Be it as one quarter of the Mercury Music Prize shortlisted Portico Quartet, or as an engaging and accomplished singer-songwriting guitarist, his music exudes a passion for creativity and an effortless blurring of musical boundaries. Drawing from a range of influences and experiences from Congolese 'soukous' and Malian blues to Flamenco and minimalism, his is a rare cross-cultural musical expression that blends both song and groove.
BY MICHAEL MORELY OF IMAGEM MUSIC (September 2008)
For the free spirit that Nick Mulvey exudes, he’s a man with a world of experience through his music. He remembers where it all began, aged 4, getting up on a table to sing ‘Ain’t Nothing But A Hound Dog’ on his 1st day at school - an auspicious start! Since then he’s come at music from all angles. Late night jamming with kids from all over the American continent stands alongside classical guitar techniques whilst studying at ‘El Instituto Superior de Arte’ in Havana, & absorbing flamenco virtuosity on street corners in Granada, Spain, seemed natural following a trip to trap a cheap guitar with some money gifted from his concert piano playing Grandmother! In his own words “never thinking very far ahead, but also never questioning for a moment that my life would be governed by music.”
We’re not sure whether, now notorious drumstick-wielding friend from childhood, Duncan Bellamy, was present at the above-mentioned Mulvey musical debut, but with the help of another 2 later found friends the Mercury Music Prize-nominated Portico Quartet have certainly come a long way to prove that, if you give Nick Mulvey something to shake, stir, or strum he’ll effortlessly produce a sound akin to a soul tonic. His instrument of choice in Portico is the lesser-heard & heard of ‘hang’, described recently in ‘Time Out London’, as looking like a wok, only available from Switzerland via a ten-year waiting list, and making “a melodic gong sound a little like sail ropes clanging against a ship’s mast.”
On his solo material you’ll find Nick strumming a simple acoustic guitar. Sometimes he plays with the echo of Toumani Diabate’s kora, sometimes with the whisper of Nick Drake’s delicate introspections, & other times like those flamenco players we described above! The first time I saw this softly spoken, boyishly bearded young man pick up his guitar, effortlessly picking out the trio of forever summer rhythms on ‘Didn’t Have Time’, & then proceed to proffer bitter-sweet lyricism in Congolese language, Lingala, I was taken way beyond memories of the immediately apparent influence of Paul Simon’s ‘Graceland.’ It’s not just the easy use of African language itself, Nick also embraces Swahili & Shona from Zimbabwe in his songs, it’s as much the effortless glide between different tongues & tones. Nick is foremost an adventurer in his songwriting, in his playing & in his singing. There’s an ‘everyman’ simplicity in his storytelling & the sweet melody of his songs, &, at the same time, an aspirant search for personal meaning & expression in his observations. Sometimes he’s inspired by the poetry of Max Ehrmann, on ‘How Long’, for example, & D.H. Lawrence. Sometimes him & his Portico partners have been listening to Squarepusher experimentalism & the Estonian ECM legend Arvo Pärt at the same time. You can certainly check Nick’s breadth in the effortless & irresistible rhymes & vocal rhythms on ‘All The Things You Are Not Yet’, his most pop paen, written for his Godson.
You can catch Nick performing solo in the intimacy of London’s ‘St. Barnabas’ church space, telling learned tales borne from bumping into regular characters on the Underground, or at a multitude of festivals, from Malawi to Cambridgeshire’s ‘Secret Gardens’, many times with the ‘One Taste Collective’, a like-minded collection of youthful musicians, mcs, poets & performers, who started collaboration & friendship trails at the back of a pub in South London’s Balham in 2004. Nick acknowledges that ‘One Taste’ were the first to encourage him to play solo style, following Portico’s notorious busking on London’s effervescent South Bank, where most of the initial copies of the band’s debut lp, ‘Knee-Deep In The North Sea’, claim to have been bought. Now, supporting classical luminaries like Maria Schneider at ‘The Barbican’ is nothing new, & appearing next on the bill to Super Furry’s associates ‘Neon Neon’ is the way things are. Nick’s happy any which way!
Onwards & upwards, next year will surely see the Portico pilots expand on their musical heritage, both creatively, & in terms of the extraordinary exposure that they have received considering the traditionally marginalized media turf that instrumentalism is offered! We also expect to see Nick Mulvey, the solo artist, unleashed upon a wider world who will surely appreciate the simple honest qualities of life that Nick’s music exudes. African influences may have found fashion this year for sure, whether it be Vampire Weekend or DJ Mujava, but there’s no doubt that for Nick Mulvey the story goes way beyond!