The Judge RAVES!

Date: 02/03/14

Triple Play - Part III: Penguin Café - "The Red Book" (Editions Penguin Café DPC104) (2014)

When the multi-instrumentalist and composer Simon Jeffes died of a brain tumour in late 1997 at the age of just 48, it seemed that his vision - embodied in the eclectic repertoire of the Penguin Café Orchestra (PCO) - would die with him.

Over a decade later, Jeffes' son Arthur decided to take up the mantle and revive the concept with a new ensemble, called simply 'Penguin Café'. A concert at The Proms followed in 2010, as did the group's first album A Matter Of Life the next year.

Now the Penguin Café have produced their 'difficult' second album, The Red Book...

...except that there is no sense of difficulty or strain on show at all.

All the elements that fans of the PCO came to know and admire are here - the instrumentation (almost entirely acoustic), the multiplicity of styles and inspirations (African, Latin American, New Orleans, systems music, you name it), and the varying time signatures (sometimes simultaneously).

If that seems precious and pretentious when written down, then don't panic; it doesn't remotely sound that way. Penguin Café - like its illustrious precursor - have a sound which is organic and very much alive. Recorded almost entirely in the ambience of St. Jude's Church Hall in North London, the live acoustic gives a vibrant feel to the entire work.

So let's plunge in to the menu, shall we?

For starters (see what I did there? I'm wasted here, aren't I?), Aurora was originally written for a friend's wedding, was then developed and found its way into a NASA project that Penguin Café was drawn into, providing pieces of music to be beamed into space in the hope of enticing unwary alien species to get in touch.

The piece starts out with a repeated piano figure which gradually adds small flourishes whilst being increasingly augmented by the strings, woodwind and understated percussion. The development is gradual, adding staccato cello backing somewhat like a Morse signal (appropriate enough, so long as they understand Morse code on the planet Thdwix), before dissolving back to the solo piano rallentando.

We stay in space for Solaris, named after the Tarkovskiy film, which again opens with a piano figure, but more sprightly this time, which is shortly joined by the string quartet playing long, graceful notes and chords over the repeated piano rhythm (which is augmented by percussion and double bass beats). The violins then retreat to a pizzicato whilst the harmony is carried by the cellos before the full quartet returns to create a stately and effective crescendo.

Black Hibiscus takes a Chopin nocturne (No. 20 in C# minor, since you asked) as its starting point and then turns it in a distinctly Mexican direction, with a solo violin taking over the melody before a throbbing double bass and cuatro play a 3/2 rhythm straight out of Guadalajara which is overlaid by a jaunty violin. We then have a slow movement returning to the original Chopin line, before the Latin element is repeated plus penny whistles. The whole ensemble then goes to town before another rallentando conclusion. A most satisfying and lively piece, reminiscent of the trick the elder Jeffes worked with Giles Farnaby's Dream nearly forty years ago.

Bluejay, according to the booklet notes, is a "simple piece exploring the chord transition down from the tonic to the dominant minor 7th". They would understand that on Thdwix rather better than I could ever hope to do. All I can do is tell you what it sounds like. It starts with an ensemble of melodica (the only musical instrument I ever managed to coax a tune out of), double bass, cuatro (or is ukulele?) and hand percussion playing in 15/8, joined by a slow, fluent violin melody and interjections from the piano which point up the rhythm. It then breaks down into a section which appears to be in a standard 4/4 (or possibly 16/8) where the bass retreats slightly whilst the strings all join in the melody. After eight bars, we return to the original time signature with the violin playing a more rhythmic rôle and the violas and cellos carrying the melody. It then reverts to the second figure of the piece, but with the bass more prominent, with the African log drum strengthening the line. It all ends in a rather sudden retreat, where only the violin is left to play a few diminshing notes. This, I think, is my favourite track on the whole album, for its drive, its structure and its quirky almost southern African rhythm.

Radio Bemba (it is, apparently, Cuban slang for 'rumour') is a brief piece in which sections played by cuatro, double bass and piano in 5/4 alternate with ones in 5/8, with the shaker percussion playing in 4/4 throughout, giving a jauntily lop-sided feel to it, even when the violin comes in for the second half. There's a hint of one of the PCO's pieces somewhere in the piano line, but I can't quite put my finger on which one just at the moment.

The next track, Catania, started out as just a guitar piece with percussion, and indeed it starts with a shimmering semi-acoustic underpinned by cello, but as the piece ambles forward, the percussion has instead been replaced by violin and cello arpeggios with only a hand drum playing on the off-beat, then being joined by the electric bass to produce an almost reggae feel as the piece develops in a fugue stylee before gradually disintegrating.

1420 is the second track on the album associated with NASA's Kepler Project. The title doesn't refer to a year, but to something which I hadn't heard of before: The 'WOW!' signal. You can read all about it here, but suffice to say that the frequency of that mysterious emanation from Beyond was 1420MHz (or near enough for jazz). Arthur Jeffes took the four digits and assigned chords to them (rather like his father did in Cage Dead on the PCO's Union Café album over twenty years ago), and using these to build the number (as 'twere). The piano fades up in a repeating figure accompanied by the cuatros and guitar, with first cello and harmonium joining in, but then the cuatros and guitar seem to shift to a different rhythm and/or time signature, weaving in and out of the main one suggesting a shift of perspective as stellar bodies appear to whirl around one another. Bass drum and cymbal appear as occasional punctuation in order to give the feeling of magnitude, before the melody and rhythm go on their meandering ways, reaching a sort of twinkling effect before the final drum and cymbal rumble and crash return us to the simple starting pattern on piano and cuatro.

And Yet..., the longest track here, is an experiment in alternating time signatures between the regular 12/8 and 11/8. It starts out with a piano line which reminds me of the slow, almost elegiac Red Shorts from Union Café, but then its arpeggios move up a gear with the strings playing long, slow melodic and harmonic lines over them. Like other tracks, there is a circularity to this, but I have to say that - unlike the others - it doesn't seem to go anywhere very much, being almost an exercise for piano practice than anything else.

Moonbo is a similar exhibition of dexterity, but this time involving the strings playing in four different time signatures at once whilst the piano sticks to four-on-the-floor regularity. One is immediately struck by how similar it sounds, in rhythm terms at least, to Philip Glass; perhaps it's how Glass would sound if arranged by George Martin. It's pleasing enough to listen to, and improves on the track before it by being far more lively in terms of its tempo, but like its predecessor one struggles to entirely see the point.

The penultimate track, Odeon, is based on a New Orleans rhythm with a cuatro riff assisted by piano, with violin and tin whistles coming in to give an Irish tint to it as well. A different approach was apparently taken to this track compared with all the others, in that they decided to use the take where they had the most fun rather than the one where they hit everything perfectly. As a result, there's a charming looseness to it (including the sound of someone laughing at their own - or someone else's - temporary ineptitude).

The Red Book closes with (The Roaring Of A) Silent Sun, which starts with a heavy beat on the African log drum, augmented by treated piano which gives a primitive feel to it, even given the somewhat Asian-sounding violin line meandering over it. It's an interesting little piece, which might have done with a little bit more development, thus ending the album on a tantalising note.

Is The Red Book a good album? Yes, definitely. It is more coherent than its predecessor and perhaps shows that, although the apple hasn't fallen that far from the tree, Arthur Jeffes is his own man now, and will take Penguin Café forward with his own vision.

You can buy The Red Book directly from the group's website. Just click on the picture at the top to go there.

File under: Music