Penguin Cafe

Penguin Cafe – A Matter of Life… 2021 (2011/2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 45:49 minutes | 465 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Erased Tapes

Penguin Cafe are back with a lovingly produced 10th anniversary reissue of their debut album, titled A Matter of Life… 2021. Besides being completely remastered and pressed on vinyl for the very first time, the record also features a brand new 2021 recording of lead single Harry Piers, a song commemorating Arthur Jeffes’ late father and Penguin Cafe Orchestra founder Simon Jeffes.
(more…)

Penguin Cafe – Rain Before Seven… (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 49:07 minutes | 952 MB | Genre: Indie Rock
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Erased Tapes

Penguin Cafe return with new album Rain Before Seven.. A sense of optimism infuses Penguin Cafe’s fifth studio album, not the braggadocious, overconfident kind, but more a blithe, self-effacing optimism in keeping with the national character. Even when all signs point to the contrary, it operates within the certainty that things are going to be alright.

(more…)

Penguin Cafe – The Imperfect Sea (2017)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 50:00 minutes | 922 MB | Genre: Alternative, Indie
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Erased Tapes

The iconic Penguin Cafe join the Erased Tapes family and open a brand new chapter to their unique world with new album The Imperfect Sea – out on Erased Tapes 5th May 2017. A penguin stands in the middle of a scorching desert, far away from its natural habitat. This mirrors composer Arthur Jeffes’ journey and exploration into a new musical territory. Penguin Cafe have evolved into something of their own at the hands of Arthur who started the band in 2009 with the continuation and homage to his father’s legacy, to the late Simon Jeffes’ Penguin Cafe Orchestra. Now, their upcoming album echoes reminiscent sounds that embrace the new. The album title refers to a saying by his father that “we wade in a sea of imperfections…”, reflecting upon the idea that beauty can be found amongst the chaos. “If there is a narrative to the album it’s coming to the acceptance of the imperfections in all aspects of life; moreover, the recognition that these imperfections and tiny randomnesses are in fact what make up the best parts”, Arthur explains. This has also been highlighted by the striking cover artwork designed by FELD under the art direction of label founder Robert Raths, resembling a lone figure adapting to and accepting its surrounding environment. Predominantly self-composed, the new album also features covers of electronic works by Simian Mobile Disco and Kraftwerk, along with a re-working of Simon’s ‘Now Nothing’. Arthur has developed from the traditional folk and jazz heritage Penguin Cafe Orchestra is known for into another realm of blissful ambience and dance music, recreated using strictly acoustic elements. “For this album I wanted to effect a departure from where we’d been up to now. The idea was to create a musical world that would feel familiar to an audience more used to dance records but stay true to our own values. So we replaced electronic layers with real instruments: pads with real string sections, synths with heavily-effected pianos, and atmospheric analogue drones with real feedback loops ringing through a stone and a piano soundboard.” On the day of release, the band will play a headline show at New York’s Le Poisson Rouge, commencing the beginning of this new adventure for Penguin Cafe.

(more…)

Penguin Cafe – Handfuls of Night (Explored) (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 56:48 minutes | 903 MB | Genre: Contemporary Classical, Chamber Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Erased Tapes

Penguin Cafe was founded by Arthur Jeffes in 2009 as both a continuation of and homage to his father Simon Jeffes’ original avant-pop band Penguin Cafe Orchestra. Distinct from the original ensemble, Penguin Cafe features no former members of PCO, but they perform some of their compositions, and play a similarly uncategorizable blend of folk, jazz, pop, and chamber music influences, occasionally using unconventional instrumentation. While Penguin Cafe’s early releases largely stayed true to the established PCO style, the group expanded their sound with the electronic-influenced (yet largely acoustic) 2017 full-length The Imperfect Sea. Moved by a series of PCO reunion concerts that took place at London’s Union Chapel ten years after his father’s death in 1997, Jeffes formed his own band, known simply as Penguin Cafe. The lineup featured a number of notables like Neil Codling (Suede), Cass Browne (Gorillaz), Darren Berry (Razorlight), and Oli Langford (Florence + the Machine), alongside musicians from the Royal College of Music. The newly formed group released their first album in 2011 through their own independent label. A Matter of Life… was received warmly as being an almost perfect stylistic match for the Penguin Cafe Orchestra’s sound; even so, Jeffes was very much a composer in his own right, and despite a desire to stay true to the music of his father’s band, he was never constricted by it. Penguin Cafe’s next record was inspired by a project that Jeffes worked on with the International Space Orchestra and NASA Ames. The project spawned the pieces “Aurora” and “1420,” which were eventually beamed into space, and also marked the beginning of what would become The Red Book, released in 2014. The four-song EP Umbrella, a collaboration with Japanese artist Cornelius, appeared in 2015. The group continued to include an ever-revolving number of musicians, sometimes numbering up to ten at a time. On their third record, Jeffes took his cue from one of his father’s sayings: “We wade in a sea of imperfections.” 2017’s The Imperfect Sea, although in the main self-composed, also features covers of Kraftwerk’s “Franz Schubert,” Simian Mobile Disco’s “Wheels Within Wheels,” and a reworking of Simon Jeffes’ “Now Nothing.” Penguin Cafe’s fourth full-length, 2019’s Handfuls of Night, was conceived after Greenpeace commissioned Jeffes to write four pieces of music about specific breeds of penguins. He then expanded this concept into an entire album, envisioned as a soundtrack to a world of anthropomorphic penguins. – Bekki Bemrose

(more…)

Penguin Cafe – Handfuls of Night (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 46:43 minutes | 817 MB | Genre: Chamber Jazz, Instrumental
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Erased Tapes

On October 4th Erased Tapes present Handfuls of Night the highly anticipated follow-up to Penguin Cafe’s much applauded 2017 album The Imperfect Sea inspired by the Antarctic, Arthur Jeffes’ journey following in Scott’s footsteps and our penguin friends that reside there. Using gut-stringed violins, viola, cello, bass, percussion, upright and grand pianos, synthesiser, harmonium and more, Arthur Jeffes and his cohorts have crafted a vivid series of panoramic sonic landscapes, that are as rich in cerebral poignancy as they are in emotional depth. Bookended by the atmospheric ambient piano pieces ‘Winter Sun’ and ‘Midnight Sun’, the album traverses glacial minimalism with ease, combining their signature contemporary classical panoramas, such as the melancholic yet upbeat lead track ‘At the Top of the Hill, They Stood…’ and the colossal cinematic piece ‘Chapter’, with the crystalline folktronica on ‘Pythagorus on the Line Again’ a re-visiting and continuation of the Penguin Cafe Orchestra’s 1993 Union Cafe song on the principles of harmonics. Handfuls of Night began life after Greenpeace commissioned Jeffes to write four pieces of music corresponding to four breeds of penguins, to help raise awareness for the endangered Antarctic seas. A fundraising evening at EartH in Hackney followed, where Penguin Cafe premiered the four songs named after their feathered counterparts to a sold out audience; the rousing contemporary folk inflected ‘Chinstrap’, the mournful and minimalistic ‘Adelie’, stoic and rhythmic ‘The Life of an Emperor’ and the wistful, string-laden ‘Gentoo Origin’. Handfuls of Night’s tones, textures and melodies evoke otherworldly expanses, which at different junctures are either foreboding, awe inspiring or peaceful. There’s subtly morphing rhythmic repetition throughout, somewhere between minimalism, krautrock and the piano-cascades of label peer Lubomyr Melnyk. Jeffes creates a kinetic, circling motion, which drives the album forward in the form of a musical trip that mirrors the physical journey it was inspired by.

(more…)

Penguin Cafe – A Matter of Life… 2021 (2011/2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 45:49 minutes | 465 MBGenre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Erased Tapes

Penguin Cafe are back with a lovingly produced 10th anniversary reissue of their debut album, titled A Matter of Life… 2021. Besides being completely remastered and pressed on vinyl for the very first time, the record also features a brand new 2021 recording of lead single Harry Piers, a song commemorating Arthur Jeffes’ late father and Penguin Cafe Orchestra founder Simon Jeffes.
(more…)