GoGo Penguin

British jazz scene has been getting more and more interesting in the last couple of years and the trio I will mention in this post is a fine example of what new jazz translates to nowadays.

GoGo Penguin are a band from Manchester,UK featuring pianist Chris Illingworth, bassist Nick Blacka, and drummer Rob Turner.

GoGo Penguin - Photo credit: Linda Bujoli

Their debut album "Fanfares" was released in 2012 from Gondwana records. This album had Grand Russell on bass who was replaced by Nick Blacka on their second CD called the "v2.0" in 2014.
Here is the title track from the first album...

The band's history goes back to "Royal Northern College of Music" in their native Manchester. Their unique and solid sound made them come to the forefront of the jazz scene which is over-populated by trios. One other critical success factor is that the band members are quite young and they try to reflect certain inspirations from an eclectic musical taste from Massive Attack, Brian Eno, Esbjörn Svensson Trio, Aphex Twin to Debussy and Shostakovich...

Here is another track called "Hopopono" from their second album.

You might notice how unified their sound is, they do not try soloing in the songs and rather use an uninterrupted instrumentation throughout the song. I guess this also makes their sound more interesting.

In 2015, the band signed a deal with Blue Note Records and released the album "Man Made Object", which is my favorite. I remember reading somewhere that almost all the compositions of this album were electronically made on Ableton by the drummer Ron Turner and arranged afterwards for the band's acoustic sound.

Let's hear a piece called "All Res".

Their latest album was released in 2018 with the title of "Humdrum Star". Here is a video of the band explaining themselves and the recording.

It is amazing to watch these young guys make so much sense. They seem so relaxed and wise...If you get the chance of listening to their full albums chronologically, you can feel the development and the culmination of their music. It is so enjoyable to listen how parallel their jazz sound is to electronic music.

Let's conclude with a song from this album called "Window".

GoGo Penguin has greatly achieved to combine different musical perceptions, styles and sounds and they have created their unique jazz sound that we mostly hanker for. Highly recommend to all music lovers!