Everything Is Going To Be Ok

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Their artistry has seen a devoted global following continue to gather around them. In September 2014, their second album v2.0 was shortlisted for the Mercury Prize Album of the Year. Then, the band signed to the legendary Blue Note Records for their critically-acclaimed Man Made Object record in 2016. Now with a new drummer Jon Scott and an enhanced electronic sensibility, the band are working closely with Joe and producer Brendan Williams to refine how they operate in the studio. The album feels like a new chapter in your artistic and personal development. Has making it been a cathartic experience? Chris: I started playing piano quite early, around the age of 8, and after seeing a classical piano concert with my parents I apparently said to them ‘that’s what I want to do when I’m older’. I wasn’t really thinking about a career in music at that age, it was just a dream as a kid like saying you want to be a spaceman or a ninja or whatever, but as I kept learning and becoming more obsessed with music it became a real career goal and I knew there was nothing else I’d rather do. Chris: We’d all known each other and played together in various groups for a good few years before we started GoGo Penguin. Manchester is a great city for music and creativity in general, it’s big enough that there’s plenty going on and space for everyone to do their thing but small enough that you get to know people, get to know what’s going on and feel part of a community. We recognised that we were similar minded in what we wanted to say and try to create as musicians and when we first started working together we knew there was something good going on, it just felt right.

The band composes and performs as a unit and the band members refer to their music as “acoustic-electronica”. Their largely (but not exclusively) acoustic music draws on break-beats, classical influences, jazz, minimalist piano melodies, powerful basslines, drums inspired from electronica and anthemic riffs. Indeed, while the music on Everything Is Going To Be OK contains jazzy elements — there’s improvisation, the upright bass is often prominent, and the rhythms sometimes swing — there are so many other things going on that it’s almost impossible to categorize them. A piece like “Friday Film Special” owes more to DJ Shadow than to Brad Mehldau, and “Soon Comes Night” lays a pulsing electronic filter over the keyboard and blasts Scott’s drums through a wash of static and noise. After finding your love for creativity and music, how did that manifest into wanting to make a career out of it? Coming into a group with the public profile of GoGo Penguin brings with it a certain amount of pressure to perform, something the drummer admits to feeling. “I’ve joined a lot of bands over the years, but generally in a context where you’re a little bit more anonymous, and to come into a situation where it’s three distinct personalities who all shape the music…yeah, that’s a thing, and there are obviously fans of the band who really know [the older material] intimately, so it’s a psychological landscape to deal with.” The crisp friction of this genre-pushing trio largely sets the sound-profile for the record as a whole, inviting the listener to contemplate the meaning of the ensemble’s experimental timbres within the familiarity of the syncopated hypergrooves for which they have come to be known. Through a melange of analogue and digital techniques, each player develops the sonic possibilities of their primarily acoustic instruments in the same manner EDM producers may approach new modular rhythms and synth patches. In GoGo Penguin’s case, however, this allows the group to pursue their electronic influences without always resorting to the use of electronic devices themselves.

Everything Is Going To Be Okay

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.”

Ahead of the release of Everything Is Going to Be OK, we caught up with the trio to discuss the upcoming album and its emotional importance, creating depth in their compositions, and how their sound has developed over the years. Are GoGo Penguin jazz? Their first album, Fanfares, came out just over a decade ago, in November 2012; it was released on Gondwana, a label run by trumpeter Matthew Halsall, whose own music is quite beautiful spiritual jazz. They stayed with Gondwana for their 2014 breakthrough release, v2.0, but then signed with Blue Note for 2016’s Man Made Object, 2018’s A Humdrum Star, and 2020’s self-titled release, which was followed the next year by the remix album GGP/RMX. Your sound feels almost indefinable by normal industry standards – does standing out come naturally to you? Berlin, January 20, 2023 – Today, UK-based cinematic break-beat trio GoGo Penguin announce their forthcoming new album Everything Is Going to Be OK (April 14, SONY MUSIC/XXIM Records), a sonically liberated new direction for the band, born of a period of deep personal loss, mourning, and triumph. NEW ALBUM BURSTS WITH NEW BEGINNINGS AFTER PERIOD OF TURMOIL, DEEP PERSONAL LOSS AND MOURNING, BAND’S TEMPORARY SHAKEUP AND RE-FORMATION

Everything Is Going to Be OK was born during a time of turbulence and loss. Recorded in a personally difficult period for the band, which included deep personal loss and mourning, the album studio time offered the band a sanctuary from real life. The resulting project draws its strength from a shared understanding and empathy, with a truly vibrant and hopeful sonic.. Life has many great aspects to it and despite the lows, we should be mindful and grateful to celebrate the highs at every turn. Through our hardships, together, we will emerge stronger; everything is going to be ok. GoGo Penguin on their sixth full-length: where they've previously had a pattern of evocative titles and vaguely futuristic abstract covers, this one (at first glance) looks and reads almost like a greeting card. This also comes after one-third of the trio changed with 2022's interim EP, Between Two Waves (Sony/XXIM). Underneath the wrapping, though, it's recognizably the same evolving not-jazz-not-techno mix that they've made into their own niche, even when taking time to touch grass (or just watch the birds) for a while. From an audible perspective, the most striking element of this recording arrives in the form of the sonic evolution the group has undergone, especially Chris Illingsworth’s piano by way of the Palm Mute Pedal (followers of Nils Frahm will be familiar with this particular appliance already). Similar to pressing a finger on the string, this piece of kit allows the player to apply a long strip of felt over vast stretches of the piano’s strings, producing a sonic effect that combines a restrained feathery pizzicato tone with an elongated harplike sustain.

The album studio time offered the band a sanctuary from real life, and the resulting project draws its strength from a shared understanding and empathy, with a truly vibrant and hopeful sonic direction. Life has many great aspects to it and despite the lows, we should be mindful and grateful to celebrate the highs at every turn. Through our hardships, together, we will emerge stronger; everything is going to be ok. People have always got to find their own things in it and take what they need,” says Chris. “It’s nice that the music makes them feel positive although, from our side, nothing is ever too rigid. There’s an openness to our music which we like to explore and evolve.” Image: Rich WilliamsGoGo Penguin shirks tradition, fusing the elements of jazz with classical influences and the charging, repetitive beats of electronica” It’s this contrast between the organic and synthetic that summarises the core message of the album. As AI, facial recognition and other pernicious technologies assume an insidious role within our day-to-day lives, what freedoms are to be lost, creative, spiritual or otherwise? On the other hand, what, in this time of authorial dispute, can artists reclaim?

Glimmerings was one of the first tunes that we began to work on when preparing ideas for a new album. 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 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 for where it’s going to take you and you have to trust in the process and yourself to see where that process will lead you”.People have always got to find their own things from it and take what they need. It’s nice that the music makes them feel positive although from our side, nothing is ever too rigid. There’s an openness to our music which we like to explore and evolve.” GoGo Penguin… is also an experiment in repetitions and possibilities….It’s highly mathematical counterpoint that still feels improvised.”