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

Penguin Cafe Orchestra - Union Cafe (1993)

This was the first full album I heard by the late Simon Jeffes' Penguin Cafe Orchestra, when it was given an anniversary reissue (and first outing on vinyl) by Erased Tapes last year.  The cover painting was re-photographed as above, and the album proves a good fit for what's fast becoming one of my favourite record labels ever, prefiguring their accessible-with-a-hint-of-avant-garde neo-classical bent by decades.

A handful of other PCO albums are available (like this one), and if you've watched any average amount of TV/movies/TV advertising (well, that last one largely in the UK) you'll find that their most famous tunes are already embedded in your memory many times over.  Union Cafe, however, was their final (Jeffes passed away in 1997 from a brain tumour) and grandest statement, and as far as I'm concerned should definitely be as widely known as the early stuff.

The mood across these 74 minutes is mainly sedate and melancholy, but it's a pastoral, languorous melancholy, like a benzo-spiked Pimms at summer sunset by an English country river; only getting remotely dark once (Thorn Tree Wind could pass for late-Stars Of The Lid).  There's a couple of jokers in the pack though, one of them perfectly placed at the start of the album (the brilliant boogie-woogie rave up of Scherzo & Trio) and the other halfway through, the rousing, folky Organum.  Notwithstanding Scherzo, and the 10-minute pulse of Vega, my favourites all seem to be in the second half of the album, where the shorter pieces collect - especially two gorgeous piano miniatures, Silver Star Of Bologna and Kora Kora.  Pass the Pimms!

original cover, 1993

link