Instrumental duo Portraits is one of the most interesting projects to come our way this summer. Comprised of guitar savants Joseph Anidjar and Joshua De La Victoria, the band released their ambitious debut album Buy High after two years of recording and writing. The pair produced and mixed the album themselves, joined by studio bassist Jacob Umansky and drummer Troy Wright along with vocal contributions from Gabriel Levi, Michael Lessard (The Contortionist) and synth from Jordan Pistilli. Positioned aesthetically and stylistically somewhere between Intervals, Animals as Leaders and The 1975, Portraits debut album is a mix of impressive fretboard fireworks and supremely catchy songwriting that will appeal to guitar nerds and indie-pop fans alike. We sat down with the band for a track by track examination of Buy High, which you can read below!
“Eterna” – (Joshua) This song was inspired by some of the tracks on The 1975 album “notes on a conditional form”. That album really inspired me to take a deeper dive into synth and analog textures in music.
“Buy High” – (Joseph) When we wrote this song we wanted it to have a feel good 80es chorus sort of vibe and a more traditional arrangement. We wanted to subvert the expectation of the listener who is expecting this release to be a regular instrumental prog album. Having our friend Gabe Levi feature on vocals was a huge addition to this track.
“Not Bad” –
(Joseph) Not bad is one of our more upbeat songs and features a lot of interesting productions and cool grooves. Really happy about how this one turned out.
(Joshua) This one was very pop inspired. We recorded the intro guitar plucking sound after listening to an ed sheeran song. The original idea was to write a pop song but with weird rhythms and prog guitar.
“Drip” – (Joseph) ‘Drip’ is a song I wrote before Portraits was a thing in a manic episode after a pipe burst in my room. I had to move all my equipment to another room and that sparked enough creativity to make this song happen in a few days. When I brought this to Josh I told him to make a couple of the sections his own and what he wrire really brought the composition together. Specially that solo section in the middle.
“Quinten Seventino” –
(Joseph) This is an interlude based on a song I had written to play with my jazz trio a while back. It featured some pretty involved but subtle rhythms alternating between quintuplets and seven tuplets hence the name. This interlude also bridged the gap between the upbeat and more “pop” side of the album to the darker and heavier side of the album.
(Joshua) I did the production on this song after I made ‘Eterna’. I wanted there to be a similar vibe to the drums, synths, and textures. In the first half of this song, I recorded rain outside my room and layered it underneath the synths.
“Negative Space” –
(Joseph) This track has the most involved rhythms and chord changes and somehow we managed to keep it somewhat musical.
(Joshua) I wrote this song before we created Portraits. The idea was to write a rhythm where we never hit a downbeat (at least in the A section). It was inspired by some rhythmic concepts my good friend Matt Garstka showed me a while back!
“Sell Low” – (Joseph) This song is really exciting for me because we were able to get a vocal feature from Michael Lessard (The Contortionist). I love his band and it was great to work with him. We definitely took a more traditional prog approach for this one. Focused more on the riffs and the grooves rather than making everything very technical. It still ended up fairly technical though.
“Kiowa” – (Joseph) This song is definitely the most technical. For a while I thought it was a bit too all over the place but as the final drums and production came together I started feeling really good about it.
“Forgetting” – (Joseph) With this track I really wanted to lean into a vibe that we hadn’t touched throughout the album. This sort of minor chord progression has a lot of nostalgia and emotional weight to me and I think leaning into that for the last track was a good way to wrap up the album. Also, most of it is in 17/16 which is definitely the most sad boy time signature!
Buy High vinyl and merch bundles are available here. Make sure to follow Portraits on social media and follow them on Spotify here!
