GOGO PENGUIN’S SELF TITLED ALBUM, OUT MAY 1
06 MARCH 2020 (TORONTO, ON) -- When a musical ensemble chooses to self-title an album mid-career, it usually signifies that they’ve struck upon the motherlode, hit the jackpot, and generally arrived at a point they’ve always striven for.
Listen to "Atomised" HERE
Coming from GoGo Penguin, an eponymous album is quite a bold statement: the instrumental trio from Manchester, England have fielded plaudits and rave reviews for their inspiration and originality at every turn since 2013 – when they settled on their dream line-up of Chris Illingworth (piano), Rob Turner (drums) and Nick Blacka (bass). Fusing jazz, classical and electronic influences, they’ve been nominated for Mercury Prize Album Of The Year and have enjoyed success in the live arena.
“In the past, we'd have to get in the studio and finish the album in what felt like three days,” says drummer Rob. “This time, we had six months of writing, and two weeks of recording, so everyone had a lot more time to contribute to each track. There was more experimentation, trying things out and often throwing them away."
“As a result, the album is more sophisticated. We had quite simple lives in the past. We had quite simple lives in the past. We were younger, so there wasn't so much drama, and there hadn’t been so many important events in our lives that fed into the music. This time, there's a lot more facing the realities of becoming older, facing mortality, and watching people that you care about being very close to death. At the same time, Chris became a dad. The longer you live, the more complicated your reality becomes, so we felt our music had to reflect that.”
After all those months of aural alchemy up North, GoGo Penguin are now ready to go back into the world again, and take the upward trajectory to its next stage, to a bigger audience again than they ever dreamt of, including iconic Brixton Academy – “which is like, fucking hell!”, summarizes a scarcely disbelieving Nick.
“We’ll get up on a festival stage and everyone’ll be dancing,” says Chris, in trying to sum up their band’s unique appeal. “There’ll be people who are out of their mind on whatever, and then people who’re there with their family just dancing with a little kid – old guys and everybody in between, and we’ll be playing something where there’s distortion on the bass so it sounds like a synth, or Rob's playing house beats....
“To be honest, that's the thing that matters to us. As far as we’re concerned, people can call it whatever they like."
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