Penguin Cafe's Music Has Infiltrated Daily Life from Films Like Napoleon Dynamite to Countless

PENGUIN CAFE

Penguin Cafe's music has infiltrated daily life from films like Napoleon Dynamite to countless theme tunes, and they've played festivals and venues ranging from Bestival and The Big Chill to a sold out Royal Albert Hall as part of the BBC Proms. Their sound is at once familiar and new, combining acoustic power and a beguiling, feisty charm.

Following a sell-out UK tour last year and performances across Japan and Australia, Penguin Cafe will release their new album The Red Book in February 2014. The second release from the freshly re-imagined Penguin Cafe is the culmination of two years’ work that has seen Arthur Jeffes - son of original composer and Penguin Cafe Orchestra founder Simon Jeffes - investigate whole new areas of sound and vibrancy, alongside his eclectic collection of musicians and characters, marking an ambitious extension from their debut A Matter of Life.

PRESS QUOTES

‘Penguin Cafe continues to occupy a unique place in music: nothing else has ever sounded quite like it. Eccentric, charming, accommodating, surprising, seductive, warm, reliable, modest and unforgettable: it's a true friend.’ (Brian Eno)

‘Upbeat folk strums, north African strains, a little blues, some classical minimalism, a hint of Calypso and a touch of Celtic fire – exquisite’ (The Arts Desk)

‘This is music that is designed with a real generosity of spirit.’ (The Guardian)

‘Arthur Jeffes led a ten-piece ensemble that displayed the intricacy, finesse and understanding you would usually associate with a chamber orchestra.’ (Music OHM)

‘The music of one of Britain’s most jauntily eccentric bands is back on stage.’ (Daily Telegraph) ‘Jeffes’ son, Arthur, is reviving the music and adding a little of his own with a nine-piece band featuring the unique mix of ukuleles, strings, percussion, electric bass and piano, and the unlikely blend of African rhythm, folk fiddle and classical cadences works its whimsical magic.’ (The Times)

AUDIO / VIDEO

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=vpoHNO8awJ8

http://soundcloud.com/penguincafe/landau

www.penguincafe.com

www.facebook.com/ThePenguinCafe

http://soundcloud.com/penguincafe/telephone-and-rubber-band-1

www.youtube.com/watch?v=2hXH0NPi5iU&feature=player_embedded

ABOUT THE BAND

If anyone doubts the mysterious power of music to take on a life of its own, they should type the title Music for a Found Harmonium into the iTunes library. More than 30 versions of this vivacious little melody, other than the original, are available by folk, country and bluegrass groups. Sometimes it is credited as ‘trad/anon’. And that’s before considering its appearances on television and in film – from Napoleon Dynamite to It’s All Gone Pete Tong via Michael Moore’s Capitalism: A Love Story. Not bad for a tune that emerged without fanfare in 1984 on a small British record label.

American sociologists talk about musical ‘ear worms’, and Simon Jeffes – creator of the Penguin Cafe – was the master. His tunes, on first hearing, can appear deceptively slight, but they have an internal balance and detail that have helped them burrow deep into the culture: tunes such as Perpetuum Mobile, a BBC continuity staple, or Telephone and Rubber Band, Jeffes’s gift to mobile phone advertisers. ‘There is a quiet generosity to the music that lends itself to different contexts’, says Jeffes’s son Arthur; ‘It does not stamp up and down.’

The group began life in 1972 after Simon Jeffes became disillusioned with the rigidities of classical music and the limitations of rock. As Arthur puts it: ‘He had a dream in which people were living isolated lives in soulless buildings, staring silently at screens. But you could reject this way of living, and down the road was this shambolic building with lots of lights and sounds of cheerful chaos coming out of it. And this was the Penguin Cafe. It had long tables, a bar, and at the back there was always a band playing, and this was the music that my father started writing.’

As Jeffes gathered collaborators, the group recorded intermittently and made increasingly successful tours. They were beloved in Japan, were regulars at the Royal Festival Hall and dropped in on Glastonbury. The music was defiantly unclassifiable – a 16th-century melody might gel with Venezuelan folk (Giles Farnaby’s Dream) or English pastoral with boogie-woogie (Scherzo and Trio); the sound of a telephone engaged signal might inspire Jeffes; so might two dripping taps.

Still Life at the Penguin Cafe was commissioned by the Royal Ballet and became a repertory hit. Ultimately. Jeffes achieved what few composers manage – creating a musical world and language that were entirely of their own. But after recording six studio albums, the group came to a tragic halt when its creator became ill. A brain tumour was diagnosed and Simon Jeffes died in 1997; he was 48. The ensemble appearing now represents a remarkable rebirth. A decade on from Jeffes’ death, three reunion concerts were held at the Union Chapel in North London in December 2007. This time the group was joined by Arthur Jeffes, who had finished his archaeology and anthropology degree at Cambridge and was composing soundtrack music and record producing. ‘It was brilliant; it was such a joy to hear the music being played live and the response was amazing’, Arthur recalls.

In 2009 Arthur brought together a fresh group of musicians, ranging from luminaries from The Royal College of Music to members of bands such as Suede and Gorillaz to perform his father’s music, together with new compositions of his own. Their first engagement was an invitation from Teenage Cancer Trust (a charity with which the group is very involved) to film a performance in the Royal Albert Hall. This set down the group’s sometimes radical re-workings of the music of Simon Jeffes, while introducing Arthur as a composer in his own right. They toured to festivals such as The Big Chill, Edinburgh Festival and Bestival alongside a string of special concerts in Italy, Spain, Ireland and across Britain. 2010 was largely spent preparing and producing the group’s first official album A Matter Of Life…, which has now been released on the Penguin Cafe label, but they took time to play The Proms at the Royal Albert Hall. Last year they completed a 21-date UK tour that took them to festivals across the summer, before touring Australia and Japan.

NB: The group are called Penguin Cafe, not Penguin Cafe Orchestra, and the latter should not be used. Please check to make sure the name is correct.