Name: A Humdrum Star
Brand: Universal Music Vertrieb - A Division of Universal Music GmbH
SKU: 164696564
Price: 8.08 GBP
Availability: InStock

A Humdrum Star

Rating

Album: A Humdrum Star
#	Song Title		Time
1)	Prayer	More Info...	0:03
2)	Raven	More Info...	0:05
3)	Bardo	More Info...	0:07
4)	A Hundred Moons	More Info...	0:04
5)	Strid	More Info...	0:08
6)	Transient State	More Info...	0:06
7)	Return to Text	More Info...	0:05
8)	Reactor	More Info...	0:06
9)	Window	More Info...	0:05

Performer Notes

Personnel: Chris Illingworth (piano); Nick Blacka (double bass); Rob Turner (drums).
Audio Mixers: Brendan Williams; Joseph Reiser.
Recording information: Low Four Studios, Manchester (06/10/2017-06/23/2017).
Go Go Penguin's genre-bending, EDM-influenced brand of jazz has earned the Manchester-based trio plaudits, including being shortlisted for the Mercury Prize in 2014. The band's fourth studio album, and second for Blue Note, 2018's atmospheric A Humdrum Star, finds them delving even deeper into an electronic-influenced sound that favors texture and mood over standards or jazz-based elements. Once again featured are bassist Nick Blacka, pianist Chris Illingworth, and drummer Rob Turner. Working with producers Joe Reiser and Brendan Williams, the trio offers a set of original compositions rife with skittering breakbeats, roiling piano melodies, and warm acoustic bass grooves. It's a style that seems informed as much by the computer-based production of Four Tet, and Amon Tobin as the hypnotic classical compositions of Philip Glass and the '70s jazz of Keith Jarrett. To achieve this cross-pollinated aesthetic, the band purportedly balance their compositional process between writing songs on their instruments and utilizing electronic production programs that they then translate to live instrumentation. As a result, these songs have the wave-like flow of electronic dance tracks but with the expansive, acoustic atmosphere of classic ECM recordings. ~ Matt Collar

Professional Reviews

Clash (Magazine) - "There's a richly atmospheric sense of ambition running through the record, continually side-stepping expectations on the band's continually inventive strand of jazz-but-not-jazz."