A MATTER OF LIFE...

The leader of one of the most unique and hard-to- categorize bands ever, Penguin Cafe Orchestra, was the multi-instrumentalist and composer Simon Jeffes, who died of brain tumor in 1997 at the age of 49. His son Arthur Jeffes founded Penguin Cafe around 2009 in order to honour his father's musical heritage. Soon he added his own new compositions to the repertoire, and this debut album is completely composed by Arthur (one track being co-written with one of the album's co- musicians).

I am not an advanced connoisseur of PCO, and this album is my first and only contact with PC this far, but it seems to me this album comes very close in sound and spirit to the music of PCO. If I was told that it actually was a PCO album, I would't have a clear reason to question it. Perhaps the piano, Arthur's main instrument, dominates the music more. Other featured instruments include cello, viola, violin, harmonium, ukelele, etc. Percussion is central on some pieces. Just like PCO, this is instrumental, acoustically oriented, rather calm, unoffensive and quietly intelligent music combining elements of classical chamber music, chamber jazz, minimalism, World Music and ambient. Maybe the later PC albums are easier to see as post/math-rock?

An interesting feature here is Arthur's brief introducing text for each piece. They get pretty technical, speaking about phrase-ends, bar structures, differing meters such as 5/4 and 10/8, sequences, C minors, etc. Nevertheless, they give a useful view to the music and the ideas behind it. 'That, Not That' is a piano and cello duet reminding me of Michael Nyman's film music. On the next, rhythmically very complex piece Kathryn Tickell's Northumbrian pipes carry the theme intoduced by a melodica. The sharp minimalism approaches that of Philip Glass. On a couple of following tracks there are traces of African music.

The moody and slow-paced piano & cello piece 'Finland' is not about my home country but about a dying dog of that name, "but I think over the years it has come to be more about loss in general". One track is inspired by the Fibonacci sequence of numbers. All in all, this calm-natured album is not difficult to listen to, but it's not giving me (emotionally) very deep impressions either. Maybe because of that I'm not tempted to rate it higher than 3,5 stars, but I'll round it up for the high level of sophistication and for the supplementary texts. Recommended to fans of PCO and listeners of modern chamber music.