The iconic Penguin Cafe join the Erased Tapes family and open a brand new chapter to their unique world with new album ‘The Imperfect Sea’. Predominantly self-composed, the new album also features covers of electronic works by Simian Mobile Disco and Kraftwerk, along with a re-working of Simon’s ‘Now Nothing’. Arthur has developed from the traditional folk and jazz heritage Penguin Cafe Orchestra is known for into another realm of blissful ambience and dance music, recreated using strictly acoustic elements.
“Jeffes has safeguarded the Orchestra’s broad, eccentric range of instruments, and shifts effortlessly from drones to good-natured, pastoral pleasures” Uncut 8/10
“Inspired orchestral minimalism” Mojo ★★★★
“Bouncy minimalist quavers, global folk influences and genteel Heath Robinson surrealism…he shares his father’s talent for painting delightful scenes with limited palettes” The Wire
“Warm, welcoming, and utterly enchanting” Drowned In Sound
“Blending energetic rhythms, hypnotic melodies and intense ambience to create something pleasingly familiar and concurrently fresh” Buzz ★★★★
“Arthur’s determination to keep the band’s trademark sound is admirable in the extreme. What’s even better is that the music is now matching the sentiment” The Skinny ★★★★
“A beautiful album” Music OMH ★★★★½
“Sincerity and craft of composition” Mixmag
“Joyous and life affirming” Electronic Sound
“The songs inhabit their own unique sound world, of contemporary minimalist, classical and chamber music with the surrealist otherness of a dream world, taking the listener to somewhere else entirely” The Quietus