[1] While Portico Quartet are known for their jazz-influenced instrumental music, Living Fields is an electronic experimental pop album featuring guest vocal collaborations.

They described the music as "somewhere between disintegrating ambiance and pop songs"[4] and identified Tim Hecker, William Basinski, Actress, and Oneohtrix Point Never as major influences on their sound.

[4][2] The album features guest collaborations with three singers, all of whom the band had a personal connection with: Joe Newman from Alt-J, Jamie Woon, and Jono McCleery.

The Line of Best Fit wrote that with its "Bleeding sounds so that instruments never quite feel entirely synthetic nor material, it's a very British electronic record, with its echoing clatters and restless lack of pattern to tracks [...] brooding throughout, dark by its production and vocals, and its messages".

PopMatters wrote that the album "feels lifeless [...] These songs are ethereal to a fault, unable to gain a foothold in memory"[13] and MusicOMH said that "with their synth textures and post-dubstep influences, they don't sound all that different from much of the pop music being made at the moment".