Penguin Cafe Orchestra

I like this band.

I have to refresh my memory as it's been quite a while since I last listened to them.

My memory says (but is not 100% certain) that I listened to Signs of Life most.

Edited by Archisorcerus - April 06 2023 at 10:12

A very interesting band. I like all their albums roughly equally.

I love to seeing you all with your different preferences, in agreement that these Penguins are an all-round wonderful Cafe Orchestra:). I couldn't really pick a favorite myself. Musically speaking. But I voted for Broadcasting From Home as I have that extra special relationship with it.

A great band. All their albums sound great to me.

Don't remember having heard Union Café, but I listened to the first four and especially like the first two. Difficult to single out one over the other, but I guess I'll go with the debut.

It's not on the list, so I didn't vote, but I like their live album.

Love this:

“My father, Simon Jeffes, was in the south of France in 1972-73, where he got terrible food poisoning from some bad shellfish and spent 3 or 4 days with a terrible fever. During this, he had very vivid waking dream – a nightmare vision of the near future – where everyone lived in big concrete blocks and spent their lives looking into screens. There was a big camera in the corner of everyone’s room, an eye looking down at them. In one room there was a couple making love lovelessly, while in another there was a musician sat at a vast array of equipment but with headphones on so there was no actual music in the room. This was a very disconnected de-humanising world that people had made for themselves…

However you could reject that and look further afield, and if you went down this dusty road you would eventually find a ramshackle old building with noise and light pouring out into the dark. It’s a place you just fundamentally want to go into, and this is the Penguin Cafe. There are long tables and everyone sits together, and it’s very cheerfully chaotic. In the back there is always a band playing music that you are sure you’ve heard somewhere but you have no idea where – and that is the Penguin Cafe Orchestra – they play this music.

When my dad woke up he decided that he would write the music that would be played by the band from his dream, and so with that as a criteria he then wrote for the next 25 years and that is the world that we now also inhabit…”

Arthur Jeffes, BBC London – February 8th 2014 - read more here

I like their music but don't know individual albums. I first heard of them because a couple of their songs were on an EG compilation cd called Angels In The Architecture that I bought back in the early 90s. I thought all the artists on there were going to sound like Robert Fripp or King Crimson. Boy was I wrong. 

I love them and we were fortunate enough to get tickets for the 10th anniversary memorial concert in2007 (and last performance of Penguin Cafe Orchestra) at The Union Chapel in Islington. Arthur jeffes was a guest for that concert and has since carried on his father legacy with his own band, penguin Cafe, creating new music and keeping his fathers music alive. See them live if you get the chance.