Hello, we last spoke to you at the Nationwide Mercury Music Awards. How were they for you?

It was cool to play in front of Robert Plant. I couldn't tell his reaction as he was too far away. I really wanted to meet him but didn't get a chance.

We saw several grown men touching him then weeping. Did you go safe in the knowledge that they'd never give the prize to the weird jazz group?

Ha ha, I suppose so. We kinda thought we might win though. I had a hope and was a little bit gutted that we didn't win. But really, we didn't expect it. In a way, we'd sort of won already.

That makes it sound like the Paralympics: "They're all winners". Anyway, you're probably new to a lot of 4Music readers, what's your story?

Basically, I've known the bass player in The Portico Quartet for 15 years. We grew up in Southampton playing in loads of little jazz and rock groups. Our first gig was playing Mission Impossible in the school dinner hall when we were nine; me playing flute and Milo playing bass. I met Nick, the Hang player, at university where we were both studying music. Nick had known Duncan for six years, and we all became mates and then moved in together in Clapham. We started making music after that.

Did everything hang on the Hang? Were you just hanging around and then someone said, "Hang this, if only we can get the hang of the Hang, everything will hang together?" etc, etc.

Yeah. With the Hang, you tend to play short cyclic patterns. It's the percussive nature of it, you're making a beat and melody at the same time. So we have that as the basis and me and Milo work around that. That's where the elements of minimalism come in, having that constant thing in the middle and the other instruments working around it.

It's quite a specific instrument; you've only got eight notes on it and they're all in the same key. It's kind of limiting, in terms of the harmony, but you work those limitations to create a certain style. We'd never have come up with some of these patterns on the piano. It definitely steers you in a certain direction.

People might be slightly frightened by the fact you're considered jazz. Are there some friendlier words you'd use to describe The Portico Quartet?

I suppose we'd just say, instrumental music. It's not actually jazz. There's not much free improvisation. One of the things about our sound is it's not in a genre. People put it in jazz because that's easy but it takes influences from world music, loads of West African music. Duncan, the drummer, used to make hip hop. Milo is more rock. The jazz is only about five percent.

So would you disagree with the Big Chill website calling you "the darlings of the jazz/leftfield scene"?

Ha ha. We've got a bit of a funny relationship with jazz because we don't come from the tradition. A lot of jazz critics don't really know how to take us, especially the more right wing conservative ones! We don't get great reviews from the jazz critics.

One problem we found was not being able to pronounce the name of our favourite track on the album.

Is it 'Cittagaze'? I don't know how to pronounce it, actually. I always get told off for mispronouncing it. I think it might be Chit-a-gat-zay, but I'm not sure. It's a town in Phillip Pullman's 'The Subtle Knife'.

That's the one. The band started out as buskers. Were you playing the favourites: Green Day's 'Time Of Your Life', 'Wonderwall'...

We used to busk at the South Bank and were playing the tracks we do now, from the album. We used to make quite a lot of money. We bought an industrial CD burner that could do seven CDs in two minutes, and I think we sold over 2000 when we played round France and Spain. We could sell 200 on a Saturday at the South Bank. Maybe that CD is a collector's item now, though there's still a few floating around in our houses.

The Independent described you as "a phenomenon in the making". What do you have to do to become a fully fledged phenomenon?

Ha. More of the same, I think. But on the next album we'll have the time and money to use more instruments. Maybe getting a Kora player in. We might use an Oud on a track.

You mean the aliens from Doctor Who, with the tentacles and the glowing translator ball?

No, an Oud is a Middle Eastern instrument. We're looking forward to experimenting with that.

You're probably the only person we'll ever interview who says they're looking forward to experimenting with an Oud (apart from Lemar). Thanks Jack from The Portico Quartet.

Find out more and hear tracks from their amazing album at www.myspace.com/porticoquartet