Album
Vermilion Sands

posted: 2024-12-13 Broadcasting From Home Penguin Cafe Orchestra

released: 1984
on label: Editions EG
genre: Chamber Music
with some: NeoclassicismChamber Jazz
listen at: Apple Deezer Spotify YouTube Music
more reviews: Prog Archives

Bandleader Simon Jeffes composed the leadoff track “Music for a Found Harmonium” on a harmonium he found abandoned on a Tokyo street, which offers an inkling of the musical inspiration that sprang from this remarkable Englishman. As usual, he gathers a loose aggregation of musicians who create stunning, free-flowing acoustic sounds that defy categorization. Jeffes includes brass here for the first time on a Penguin Café Orchestra recording. Recorded over three years, the band’s third album is worth the painstaking studio overdubbing by its leader, who died of a brain tumor in 1997.