It was initially formed by Jonathan Pierce and Jacob Graham as Goat Explosion, and later added Adam Kessler and Connor Hanwick.

Founding members Jonathan (Jonny) Pierce and Jacob Graham became friends as children, having met at Bible camp.

[4] Some years later, they formed a short-lived electro-pop group initially named Goat Explosion, eventually renamed Elkland.

They then moved to Brooklyn, in the spring of 2009, where drummer Antonia Slater and former Elkland guitarist Adam Kessler joined the band to complete their live sound.

The album contained the singles "Let's Go Surfing", "Best Friend," "Me and the Moon" and "Forever and Ever, Amen" as well as "Down By The Water", which had previously been released as part of the band's Summertime!

[12] For their second LP, the band recorded quickly, again self-producing, often laying down tracks spontaneously in singer Jonny Pierce’s kitchen.

The album title has a deeper meaning for Pierce, as he describes, “Jacob and I meeting as young boys with a shared love for Kraftwerk and Anything Box and Wendy Carlos, and these were all synth pioneers, and a common feature on old analogue systems was ‘Portamento’.

[citation needed] After Portamento's world tour ended in late 2012, founding member Connor Hanwick left the group.

With taut, spindly guitar lines, liberal sprinklings of tambourine, and uptempo kick drums that belie the brooding, thoughtful content matter of songs like "Best Friend".

It is only in the past few years that I have really begun to understand what happened to me as a boy, which has helped me to start to build my own bridge toward real love.

[17] The band cite their major influences as the Smiths, Joy Division/New Order, the Wake, the Tough Alliance, the Legends, the Shangri-las, the Embassy and Orange Juice.

Cascading Slopes completed the album Towards a Quaker View of Synthesizers in 2013 and it was released in the fall through Plastiq Musiq.

Graham described the musical approach on that album, saying "The concept is to write very simple, personal, folk songs but to do it with only old, analog synthesizers".