Penguin Cafe – A Matter of Life… 2021
Erased Tapes – 29 April 2022
Simon Jeffes was on a beach in the south of France when a poem popped into his head, “’I am the proprietor of the Penguin Cafe, I will tell you things at random’ and it went on about how the quality of unpredictability, spontaneity, surprise, unexpectedness and irrationality in our lives is a very precious thing. And if you suppress that to have a nice orderly life, you kill off what’s most important. Whereas in the Penguin Cafe your unconscious can just be. It’s acceptable there, and that’s how everybody is. There is an acceptance there that has to do with living the present with no fear in ourselves.” With that, Penguin Cafe Orchestra was born. The problem is that the dream seemed to die when Jeffe’s succumbed to a brain tumour in 1997.
Great music never dies. And after Arthur Jeffes took part in a series of sold-out shows alongside the lineup featured on the 1995 live album Concert Program (minus Julio Segovia), he decided to form a new group, Penguin Cafe, featuring all-new members. Despite the lineage name, Penguin Cafe was a slightly different aggregation, one that, ten years down the road, is celebrating the re-release of their first album, A Matter of Life. Along the way, a track has been revised, in a sense celebrating the old and the new. “Harry Piers” was written by Jeffes as a piece to play at his father’s memorial service. Additionally, he plays it at the end of almost every show and soundcheck, creating a direct link to his father’s musical inspiration.
There’s a whimsy to the new “Harry Piers 2021” in keeping with the work of his father, who created pieces like “Music for a Found Harmonium” and “Prelude and Yodel.” Written as a solo piano piece, it is, in turn, both languid and inspired, stately and fast-paced, a looking glass into the memories of one man who knew Simon Jeffes better than almost anyone else.
Not surprisingly, the music of Penguin Cafe takes some interesting twists and turns, like the slide guitar inspired ukulele of “Two Beans Shaker.” Just the notion of playing slide on a ukulele sets the mind reeling. Which actually is the point. Penguin Cafe were conceived in a way to challenge the traditional music structure and find connections that fly in the face of tradition.
Jeffes combines music and cultures from various regions, mixing them in ways that are almost unimaginable while being as gentle as a whisp of air. “Pale Peach Jukebox” was imagined as a piece taking place around a fountain in a courtyard. Sounds of cicadas and splashing from the fountain while not actually in the recording, are to be imagined at the beginning and end. The notion seems whimsical, yet it also contains a logic that works in conjunction with the South American and Cuban feel of the piece.
Part of the magic of Jeffes and Penguin Cafe is how they find ways to transpose instruments and styles in ways that challenge what and how one hears. “Landau” moves from the fragile glory of Kathryn Tickell’s Northumbrian Pipes to the melodica, and never misses a beat or a heartstring along the way.
Arthur Jeffes and Penguin Cafe have, over the course of the past 10 years, managed to create a name for themselves, different yet related to the original Penguin Cafe Orchestra. A Matter of Life… 2021 illustrated the beginning of a new path. Listening to it today only serves to confirm the wisdom of the choices Jeffes made.
Watch the video for a live rendition of ‘Coriolis’ taken from the Penguin Cafe album A Matter of Life… 2021 — out April 29. Stream & pre-order it here: https://idol.lnk.to/AMatterofLife2021
Credits:
Arthur Jeffes – piano/ring mod/cuatro/dulcitone/ukulele/bass/percussion/harmonium/penny whistles/prayer bowl
Neil Codling – ukulele/piano/cuatro/harmonium
Vincent Greene – viola/violin/guiro
Pete Radcliffe – percussion
Rebecca Waterworth – cello/paper percussion
Darren Berry – violin
Andy Waterworth – double bass/bass guitar
Tom Chichester Clarke – cuatro/ukulele/melodica
Des Murphy – ukulele/cuatro/glockenspiel
Cass Browne – percussion
Oli Langford – violin
Pre-Order A Matter of Life…2021 (out 29 April) here: https://idol.lnk.to/AMatterofLife2021