Gogo Penguin
The story
I first spotted these tickets, for a concert in November, in May. At that point I had been following the band for a while and had saved a few of their songs but I wasn’t necessarily a big fan yet. It also felt weird buying tickets so far in advance (for a band that wasn’t selling out stadiums). I decided to hold off and to listen to their work more over the following months, as it’s a known fact that familiarity feeds fondness.
During that time I came to enjoy their music quite a bit. A nice bonus was that they were playing at The Junction, a venue with an eclectic offering that I had been meaning to try for a long time. After having travel plans that month preventing me from attending another concert I had followed for months, I decided to buy tickets a month in advance and patiently waited for the reminder email to come.
A day or two before the event, I was pleasantly surprised to receive an email with the actual stage times. I had gone to shows at the advertised time in the past, only to have to wait for 30 minutes or more. It’s a good way to get people to buy pints, I suppose. This was the schedule that night:
19:00 - Doors
20:00 - Vega Trails
21:00 - Gogo Penguin
22:30 – Approx Finish
23:00 - Curfew
The venue
This particular room at The Junction was somewhat rounded, and set up with the stage in what felt like a corner, leaving 270° for the audience. I thought that arrangement was quite good, much better than having the band occupy one whole side of a rectangle. The speakers, acoustics, and lights were excellent. The sound & lighting technicians sat opposite the stage, but it felt like their station was taking up a bit too much space. There was a bar to one side, next to a small merch table and the toilets. All serviceable. The £5 charge for the cloak room felt a bit steep.
The show
Vega Trails, the opening act, was a double bass and saxophone duo, whose music was similar in style to GoGo Penguin. In fact, the saxophonist is a founding member of Portico Quartet, another fantastic jazz/ambiental British band. The performance was good, and it served well to get the crowd in the right mood for the main act.
GoGo Penguin were fantastic. I’d describe their music as minimalistic, piano-forward, rock-influenced ambiental jazz. However, their work is far from sparse, spanning the gamut between hypnotising to fully energetic and engaging, often in the same track, without any of the parts overstaying their welcome. Many of their pieces have a slow start, which is entrancing, only to slowly build up the rhythm and bass sections (to almost DnB tempos and complexity) and layer sounds in order to get your whole body moving by the middle point. Often, the simple piano themes that sound haunting at the beginning will reappear throughout the more lively parts, having gained some extra flourishes but having lost none of their effectiveness or mystery. It might be surprising that this genre can get you dancing and your head banging (maybe gyrating), but I wasn’t the only one. Perhaps “hypnotising” wasn’t a metaphor.
Some song intros, like the one from Ascent, were extended to great effect. While not radio-friendly music, none of their tracks are very long, so this live setting allowed them the freedom to settle on particular themes - their music is amenable to that. The audience was certainly down for the ride. Perhaps there was an element of improvisation in this, but everything came together so well, I was none the wiser.
I went and bought some of their CDs the very next weekend.