Penguin Cafe Orchestra - Concert Program (1995)

The unseasonable weather round these parts in the last week made this one a shoo-in for premature Spring listening.  Recorded at the Wool Hall, Beckington, Somerset on 23 July 1994, this PCO live performance leans heavily on the their final studio album Union Cafe, plus a handful of earlier favourites from a gorgeous Air A Danser onwards.  As might be expected, even performing live PCO were a polite, largely sedate affair, allowing the strength of these wonderful melodies and arrangements to take precedence as they rightly should.

Making things even less gig-like, and slightly odd on first listen, is the complete absence of any audience applause - whether it was snipped from the end of each piece, or the audience were asked to only applaud at the end like symphony-goers, I'm not sure.  This makes Concert Program (another lovely PCO quirk - why the choice of US spelling for such a thoroughly English group?) more akin to a re-recorded greatest hits than a live document, but it works, and works wonders in the more spacious and immediate sound.

Disc 1 link
Disc 2 link
pw: sgtg