Hailing from Manchester, rising stars GoGo Penguin are an instrumental jazz trio made up of pianist Chris Illingworth, bassist Nick Blacka and drummer Rob Turner, who burst onto the scene in 2009. Their unique sound combines jazz with various electronic music, drawing influences from Brian Eno, John Cage, Aphex Twin and Squarepusher to “Manchester’s grey rain-streaked urban streets”, as the press release states. “Their instrumentation might be the archetypal piano trio but while the melodic, harmonic and structural ideas are influenced by both classical and jazz the rhythms are drawn from left field electronica and it’s this meeting of opposites that makes their unique acoustic-electronica sound so exciting and creates such an interesting and emotionally rich palate for the listener”.

Earlier this year, GoGo Penguim released their outstanding second album, v2.0, which has just received a nomination for the 2014 Mercury Prize. Make sure to check out the album released via Gondwana Records. To get you enticed, here’s the magnificent closing track, ‘Hopopono’, and it comes with a video, directed by Ric Lowe & Blain Cousin.