Penguin Cafe Orchestra – who described their music as “fashionable semi-acoustic chamber music” – caught the eye of Brian Eno as they explored the character of randomness. Founder Simon Jeffes died in 1997 however the band and their ambitions dwell on by means of his son. In 2017 we took a take a look at their prog credentials.
In 1972, Simon Jeffes was on vacation within the South of France when he contracted meals poisoning from fish. Throughout a excessive fever he skilled a collection of hallucinations, together with a dystopian imaginative and prescient of the long run. He recalled the incident in 1988.
“The subsequent day, after I felt higher, I used to be on the seaside sunbathing and instantly a poem popped into my head. It began out, ‘I’m the proprietor of the Penguin Cafe; I’ll let you know issues at random,’ and it went on about how the standard of randomness, spontaneity, shock, unexpectedness and irrationality in our lives is a really treasured factor. And when you suppress that to have a pleasant orderly life, you kill off what’s most vital. Whereas within the Penguin Cafe, your unconscious can simply be.”
And so the concept for the Penguin Cafe Orchestra was born. This strangest of ideas outlined a psychological area which Jeffes may fill with musical concepts. With its shifting forged of over 30 musicians he produced among the most singular music of the 70s and 80s, till his dying in 1997, aged 49.
He’d began out in a classical guitar group, however by the late 70s discovered himself disenchanted with each that outfit’s repertoire and rock’n’roll. That was when Emily Younger – one of many UK’s foremost sculptors, a distant good friend of Syd Barrett and regarded as the inspiration for Pink Floyd’s See Emily Play – met Jeffes.
“It was the 60s when Simon began being who he was by way of a musician and composer, and leaping out of the reasonably dismal previous,” says Younger. “And in that sort of optimism, it’s much like what Syd Barrett was doing – it’s fairly English.”
A lot of Jeffes’ music is difficult to pin down; mercurial in nature and stuffed with contradictions. Younger is true that with its sturdy melodies, whimsicality, wit and customarily unassuming nature, it carries a definite feeling of Englishness. However then it’s additionally pervaded by the rhythms and melodic figures of Africa and South America.
“He needed to place all that collectively,” says Younger. “He used guitar and percussion, ukulele and cuatro, with the classical strings taking part in collectively so superbly and so tight. However then there was additionally the looseness, the best way your physique can go along with the rhythm.”
Requested to classify his music in 1988, Jeffes selected the descriptions “imaginary folklore” and “fashionable semi-acoustic chamber music.” Younger remembers that, when the Orchestra have been of their early levels, one in all their gigs was listed within the “different” class in Time Out journal.
Within the mid-70s, Jeffes’ music caught the eye of Brian Eno as he was establishing his Obscure report label, which served as a haven for among the avant-garde composers of the day. “It was a little bit of a fluke,” Younger explains. “Brian had these individuals he was working with in a leftfield zone. Then Simon turned up, and what he was doing was so in contrast to the rest that Brian – bless him – mentioned, ‘We’ll do one thing; we’ll see what occurs.’”

The Orchestra’s 1976 debut album, Music From The Penguin Cafe, encompasses a core of 4 musicians, with vocals by Younger on From The Colonies. It was the one time she sang on report, as Jeffes determined to pursue a purely instrumental tack thereafter; however she helped outline the group’s aesthetic by portray surreal album covers which featured penguin-headed people in unusual tableaux.
Penguin Cafe Single feels like an outdated parlour tune carried out ragtime fashion, with see-sawing string figures dropping down in a center part of twinkling electrical pianos. On first listening – like a lot of their items – it feels uncannily like one thing that one has heard earlier than. And as Younger says, stylistically it’s virtually unattainable thus far.
Simon was actually within the harmonics and the way sound impacts you
Emily Younger
“He needed it to be a common pleasure in order that anyone, wherever on the earth may take heed to it and get as a lot pleasure out of it as he did,” she says. “It was intellectually fascinating, however on the similar time he needed his emotional world to sing and be happy.”
In 1985 Penguin Cafe Orchestra appeared because the musical interlude on the BBC chat present Wogan, taking part in the jig-like Music For A Discovered Harmonium, which the host described as “like The Chieftains with Japanese undertones.”
Younger remembers that Jeffes would sit for lengthy intervals at a piano, listening to the harmonics and overtones of single notes, then these of notes performed collectively. His fascination with sound led to the couple having fun with reasonably some uncommon nights out.

“We’d smoke a bit dope and go right down to Heathrow Airport and wander round late at evening when there have been only a few individuals,” she remembers. “The sounds of the airport have been improbable – all these totally different hums and knocks, and noises coming from behind locked doorways. It was the notion that the entire airport was one large musical instrument.
“Simon was actually within the harmonics and the way sound impacts you. Typically you’d get two totally different noises going on the similar time and so they have been making a chord; typically main and typically minor. There was a click-click-click from an escalator, so that you’ve acquired a rhythm happening similtaneously the air-con hum.”
Studying the items has been a bit like taking part in with him… there’s a complexity there that I hadn’t clocked first time round
Arthur Jeffes
The group’s most experimental piece, Phone And Rubber Band (from 1981’s Penguin Cafe Orchestra), relies on recordings of a telephone line’s engaged and ringing tones. It’s additionally their most generally heard, because it was utilized in cellular community One2One’s TV advertisements within the 90s.
Jeffes died on December 11, 1997 of an inoperable mind tumour. His colleagues continued to play his music as The Orchestra That Fell To Earth, and delivered a trio of memorial live shows at London’s Union Chapel in 2007, joined by Arthur Jeffes, son of Simon and Younger – who remembers the items feeling “like outdated pals you thought you wouldn’t see once more.”
Arthur went on to type Penguin Cafe, taking part in his father’s music in live performance alongside together with his personal materials. “I used to be a really inexperienced musician at that time and all of the musicians had their very own concepts about how the tunes ought to go – there was no central authority,” Arthur explains.

“I wouldn’t have been capable of proceed with them so we simply left it there. It was stunning however we’ve closed the chapter. I feel there was a normal settlement that it needed to be that means.” (One ex-Orchestra participant approached for this piece politely declined to be interviewed, feeling that their contributions have been now successfully written out of historical past.)
In December 2017, Penguin Cafe performed a live performance to mark the twentieth anniversary of Simon’s passing, which coincided with the label Erased Tapes reissuing the Penguin Cafe Orchestra’s final album, 1993’s Union Cafe. The group performed it in its entirety. “In a humorous means, studying all of the items from Union Cafe has been a bit like taking part in with him,” Arthur says. “It’s been emotionally turbulent and enjoyable. It was actually fascinating as a result of there’s a complexity there that I hadn’t clocked first time round.”
He cites the instance of Lifeboat, on which he performed piano dwell, with Neil Codling of Suede on cuatro. It took some time to excellent the timing of their respective patterns – in several time signatures – however once they did it yielded “a melodic outcome you wouldn’t in any other case have.”
There’s a drum sound that’s identical to a Roland TR-909. However really it was a floorboard within the kitchen
Arthur Jeffes
The composition that the majority clearly demonstrates the connection between rhythm and melody in his father’s music – plus his impish sense of humour – is Uncover America, on Union Cafe. The strings play Dwelling On The Vary and When The Saints Go Marching In on the similar time, which works delightfully. This curious counterpoint produces an sudden bonus. “There are three events the place you get this huge chord which is straight out of Appalachian Spring by Aaron Copland,” says Arthur.
He additionally performs in Sundog, in a piano/violin duet with Oli Langford, however as Penguin Cafe he’s recorded albums which might be actually minimize the fabric of the mother or father group. He describes his personal music as “extra filmic,” saying it feels extra expansive – extra opened out. So is it a homage to his father’s music, a continuation of a mode, or is all of it simply within the genes?

“All three,” he replies. “I do know after I’m proud of a specific piece going right into a Penguin Cafe challenge; however some issues are simply not proper for it. It’s fairly instinctive.” He feels his musical actions are complementary. “That must be the purpose,” he says. “Yearly or so I take into consideration simply stopping. However then I discover one thing and assume, ‘Oh, that might be actually good; that might work.’ So we’re being pulled ahead reasonably than being pushed ahead.”
Arthur’s music additionally demonstrates a well-known fascination with sonics. “On the Penguin Cafe album The Imperfect Sea, there’s a barely home drum that sounds identical to a Roland TR-909 [rhythm machine]. However really it was a floorboard within the kitchen of my home that had this pretty resonance when you tapped it together with your finger. We put a microphone on a dishcloth on the floorboard and performed that.
“So what I’m on the lookout for is to seek out methods to recreate digital sound organically and performed on actual devices. And that reasonably feels like enjoyable.”