Following the transcendent ‘Glimmerings‘ and the majestic ‘Saturnine’, GoGo Penguin have now revealed ‘Friday Film Special’, the third sublime single from their forthcoming new album Everything Is Going to Be OK. A low-fi track, ‘Friday Film Special’ is inspired by DJ Shadow’s seminal album Entroducing….., and bassist Nick Blacka had this to say about it:

“Chris and I have been big fans of hip hop and instrumental hip hop albums for many years and it’s something that we haven’t had much chance to explore before with GoGo Penguin. Albums such as DJ Shadow’s Endtroducing were a huge influence on us when we were young and Friday Film Special really tips its cap to the hip hop instrumentals that we’d grown up loving. We were both into skateboarding as kids and I think we wanted to capture a nostalgic throwback to those times.

I remember being incredibly young and asking my older brother what he was watching one day, and he said, ‘Friday Film Special’. Friday Film Specials were a series of films made by the Children’s Film Foundation and were on TV every Friday in the mid to late 80s. Even at the time, they felt old because most of them were made in the 1970s, so all the kids were wearing flares. It’s one of the most retro and nostalgic things I could think of.”

Listen to ‘Friday Film Special’ below and grab the album when it’s out on April 14th through Sony Music/XXIM.

Photo: Veil Projects, Emily Dennison

Last month GoGo Penguin announced the release of their new album Everything Is Going to Be OK and shared the transcendent first single ‘Glimmerings‘. Now the incredible and quirky jazz trio are enticing us again with a majestic new cut from the album called ‘Saturnine’. Of the track, the band comments:

“In our studio we have a lucky cat, like the ones you sometimes see in Chinese restaurants. Its arm makes a clicking sound when it waves, reminiscent of a metronome. It was a strange place to find inspiration, but it was just what we needed for this track. The title felt apt as one day we were discussing it and Chris mentioned how he felt it sounded a bit sad and melancholic. It hadn’t really occurred to me up until this point as I was more focused on it sounding quite bouncy and poppy to my ears. I think it’s a bit of both, but we find it’s fascinating that we can be working on the same track at the same time and yet experience it differently whilst doing so.”

Listen to ‘Saturnine’ below and grab the album when it’s out on April 14th through Sony Music/XXIM.

Photo: Veil Projects, Emily Dennison

New music from GoGo Penguin is always exciting news. The trio, who last year welcomed a new drummer to the fold and released an EP, Between Two Waves, have announced a new full-length album. Entitled Everything Is Going to Be OK, the effort arrives on April 14th through Sony Music/XXIM.

Alongside the announcement, GoGo Penguin have shared the first transcendent single, ‘Glimmerings’, a track inspired by British Professor Anil Seth’s book Being You. Bassist Nick Blacka comments:

“The word glimmerings stood out when I was reading a book by Anil Seth called ‘Being You’. The book is about the science of consciousness and in the Prologue, he talks about how ‘glimmerings of ideas began to emerge’. It felt like the perfect way to describe the process of thought and creativity. Glimmerings — one of the first songs we started on the new album – started from a small kernel on the synth and over time we added more and more layers until it became something a lot more complex. The idea behind the title is the very beginning, where there is only an idea and an intent to start with, but you have an aim and an idea, and you have to trust in the process.”

Listen to ‘Glimmerings’ below.

Photo: Emily Dennison

Last July GoGo Penguin gifted us with their magnificent Between Two Waves EP. Now the incredible and quirky jazz trio are following it with a stunning new track called ‘Erased by Sunlight’, which was recorded a mere a couple of months ago at Real World Studios, where they had also recorded the EP. Speaking about the track, pianist Chris Illingworth comments:

“Often, following your instincts can be the right thing to do, sometimes what feels like instinct can be the years of experience pushing you quickly in the right direction. But sometimes it’s fun to feel those instincts and see what happens when you go down another path, moving away from the road that seems obvious. That’s how this new track found its initial sound, a few musical fragments discovered through exploring ideas that may have been ignored or never found which we then used as a new starting point, allowing instinct to kick back in, leading us to Erased by Sunlight.”

‘Erased by Sunlight’ is out now through XXIM Records/Sony and you can listen to it below.

In other related news, GoGo Penguin have announced several live dates in the UK/EU this Autumn, taking in shows in Paris, Berlin, London, Athens and Amsterdam, amongst many other cities. Head over here to check all their stops.

Photo: Emily Dennison

As the release of GoGo Penguin’s new EP nears, pianist Chris Illingworth, bassist Nick Blacka and drummer Jon Scott are offering up another taste of Between Two Waves with new track ‘The Antidote Is in the Poison’. Speaking about it, Blacka says:

“The starting point for the track was taken from a sequenced pattern on a synthesiser, but we then switched everything back to the acoustic instruments and never used a synth on it at all”.

Listen to ‘The Antidote Is In the Poison’ now.

Between Two Waves EP out July 1st via XXIM Records/Sony

Photo: Emily Dennison

This Summer will see the release of Between Two Waves, the new EP from Manchester’s unique and quirky jazz trio GoGo Penguin. Following the magnificent ‘Badeep’, they have shared a new single called ‘Wave Decay’. “The title comes from a recent fascination with free diving and underwater themes”, GoGo Penguin explain. “The movement of the piano chords, particularly with the addition of the palm mute pedal, felt like the swell of ocean waves.” The track features the Palm Mute Pedal, a new 3D-printed and foot-operated pedal designed and developed by Danish pianist Otto Sammy. Take a listen below.

Between Two Waves EP is out on July 1st through XXIM Records/Sony