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GoGo Penguin: Just Another Band From The Small Blue Planet
by Ian Patterson
"Who are we? We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star in a lost galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people." This somewhat gloomy prognosis might sound like a line straight from Douglas Adam's surrealistic comic novel The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Pan Books, 1979). In actual fact, it's a quotation by American astrophysicist Carl Sagan. Curiously, it provided the ...
Continue ReadingGoGo Penguin at Out To Lunch
by Ian Patterson
GoGo Penguin Black Box / Out To Lunch Arts Festival Belfast, N. Ireland January 19, 2018 GoGo Penguin's first gig of 2018 saw the Manchester trio return to Belfast's Black Box for the Out To Lunch festival --a month-long celebration of comedy, documentaries and the broadest spectrum of music imaginable--from opera, rock and folk to West African funk, and from rockabilly and blues to punk and Irish trad. Trying to squeeze GoGo Penguin into such ...
Continue ReadingGoGo Penguin: Man Made Object
by Luca Muchetti
Uscito ormai quasi dieci mesi fa, Man Made Object è un album che l'Italia ha visto rappresentato dal vivo a quasi un anno di distanza a Milano, quando solo due mesi fa i GoGo Penguin hanno preso il centro del palco al Teatro dell'Arte. Il trio piano-basso-batteria di Manchester (Chris Illingworth, Nick Blacka e Rob Turne) arriva ed entusiasma grazie a un post-jazz che incorpora tutto quello che si muove fra la fine del Novecento e il nuovo millennio, ridefinendo ...
Continue ReadingGeno Thackara's Best Releases of 2016
by Geno Thackara
I always say it when recapping every year, and it's been truer than ever for me since I was fortunate to join All About Jazz at the start of 2016: there's always too much great stuff to take in. There are always too many albums we don't get around to during the year and too little time to properly dig into everything we do. Nonetheless, here are the jazz-related standouts out of everything that's managed to cross my desk (in ...
Continue ReadingGoGo Penguin: Man Made Object
by Geno Thackara
They're not your parents' kind of piano trio. Regardless of your age, they're not the obvious idea of yours either. In a milieu that's based on exploration or at least adaptability, GoGo Penguin is still more restless and exploratory than most; this UK outfit's brew of what they call “acoustic electronica" owes a debt to Brian Eno or the Orb as much as Bill Evans. The grooves can be based in the digital world's traditions of house, drum-and-bass or chill--not ...
Continue ReadingGoGo Penguin: Man Made Object
by Phil Barnes
Its stick or twist for GoGo Penguin as they release this, their Blue Note debut and the first of a reputed three album deal. Do they push ahead, expanding their palette of electronica seen through the prism of acoustic jazz, or retreat a tad in deference to their new paymasters by emphasising the more traditional jazz elements of their sound. Should we be concerned that the two years since their breakthrough v2.0 album suggest a creative block or difficulty coping ...
Continue ReadingGoGo Penguin at Riverbank Arts Centre
by Ian Patterson
GoGo Penguin Riverbank Arts Centre Newbridge, Ireland October 31, 2015 With the Curragh Racecourse just a few furlongs away, Newbridge is more famous for horse racing than for its bridge that spans The Liffey. However, the independent Riverbank Arts Centre--just forty minutes from Dublin--is doing its bit to broaden the town's profile as, in addition to a great place for a flutter, a home to local, national and international arts. On this Halloween night, ...
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