Penguin Cafe Orchestra

Simon Jeffes' PENGUIN CAFE ORCHESTRA toured the world during the 1970s-90’s releasing 6 studio albums, 2 live albums and a range of collections of iconic music that lives on today through their unique sound and art.


“My father, Simon Jeffes, was in the south of France in 1972-73, where he got terrible food poisoning from some bad shellfish and spent 3 or 4 days with a terrible fever. During this, he had very vivid waking dream – a nightmare vision of the near future – where everyone lived in big concrete blocks and spent their lives looking into screens. There was a big camera in the corner of everyone’s room, an eye looking down at them. In one room there was a couple making love lovelessly, while in another there was a musician sat at a vast array of equipment but with headphones on so there was no actual music in the room. This was a very disconnected de-humanising world that people had made for themselves…
However you could reject that and look further afield, and if you went down this dusty road you would eventually find a ramshackle old building with noise and light pouring out into the dark. It’s a place you just fundamentally want to go into, and this is the Penguin Cafe. There are long tables and everyone sits together, and it’s very cheerfully chaotic. In the back there is always a band playing music that you are sure you’ve heard somewhere but you have no idea where – and that is the Penguin Cafe Orchestra – they play this music.
When my dad woke up he decided that he would write the music that would be played by the band from his dream, and so with that as a criteria he then wrote for the next 25 years and that is the world that we now also inhabit…”
Arthur Jeffes, BBC London – February 8th 2014

DISCOGRAPHY
Music from the Penguin Cafe (1976)
Penguin Cafe Orchestra (1981)
Broadcasting from Home (1984)
Signs of Life (1987)
Union Cafe (1993)
The Penguin Cafe Orchestra Mini Album (1983)
When in Rome... (1988)
Concert Program (1995)
Preludes, Airs & Yodels (1996)
A Brief History (2001)
History (2001)
The Second Penguin Cafe Orchestra Sampler (2004)