Preludes, Airs and Yodels: a Penguin Cafe Primer

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Editorial reviews

From Amazon.com
Simon Jeffes's gravity-defying ensemble serves up a compilation of 19 tracks dating back to 1976. A great primer for beginners, this includes marvels of wit and construction like "Telephone & Rubber Band" and "Music for a Found Harmonium" (which is also heard here in a version by Celtic group Patrick Street). --Jeff Bateman

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Customer reviews

review by: date: 2007-07-25 rating:
Wonderful !
Found this gem while looking for something else entirely. The Penguin Café are new to me - but not their music. You'll recognise Telephone and Rubber Band from a well known advert and I've heard Music for a Found Harmonium a thousand times without knowing who it was by.

This is a wonderful compilation and a great introduction to PCO's music, some tracks date back to 1976 but it includes a great 1996 ORB remix Pandaharmonium.

The PCO was the brainchild of the English composer and multi-instrumentalist Simon Jeffes (1949-1997). You can read more about this fascinating band on www.penguincafe.com but the music speaks for itself.

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review by: Creative spark.... date: 2006-08-15 rating:
A fine introduction to a unique endevour
Penguin Cafe Orchestra was the brainchild and main musical outlet for the sadly missed multi-instrumentalist/composer Simon Jeffes. Marked by a delightful mixture of jazz, 18th Century seranade and a discreet smattering of avant-garde, they bring pleasure to all who let them in...
This collection is, a couple of niggles notwithstanding, a fine introduction to PCO, and a very pleasant album in its own right. Opening with the well known Music for a Found Harmonium and closing with the delicate Piano Music, the selection and ordering of the tracks is mostly spot on.
Those niggles? The Patrick Street cover/interpretation of Music For a Found Harmonium is pleasant, but why is it on a best of PCO? More damaging is The Orb's remix of the same track. As remixes go, it's fairly good, but it just doesn't fit in. It's metallic electronics serve only to break the mood and lessen the overall pleasure of this compilation.
But this is still a fine album and an ideal way of checking out the understated pleasures of Penguin Cafe Orchestra.
It should appeal to fans of The Durutti Column (and the reverse is fairly true too...)

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review by: david_cosby date: 2003-11-21 rating:
A tune a day keeps the doctor away.
You will know most of these tunes from adverts or movies, but don't let that stop you. There is some wonderful work here, a 'primer' for the Penguin cafe (a best of the early stuff really). I defy anyone to dislike 'Music for a found harmonium'. His later work reaches higher heights (Union Street cafe) but this is a solid and lovely album of the late great Simon Jefes.

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review by: date: 2003-09-25 rating:
Preludes Airs and Yodels, a PCO primer
Whilst most people know the track 'Telephone and Rubber Band' from the mobile phone adverts, I came to hear of PCO from an obscure Australian Film 'Malcolm'
anyway, I don't know much of PCO, but all the tracks I DO know are here. Music for a Found Harmonium may just be one of the best melodies ever penned, IMO. As a start for an album it is flawless, and the following tracks, whilst often quirky and strange at first, have a way of implanting their melodies into your head.
However, the album seems to lose momentum after the first 10 tracks or so, and often has me skipping forward to the brilliant Orb version of Music for a Found Harmonium, called PandaHarmonium.

A great introduction to PCO.


review by: hypocrite_lecteur date: 2002-07-14 rating:
"When this old world starts getting you down.."
A minor revelation, the PCO do the hardest trick of all, make simple music sound easy.

Hard to catgorise, but I'll have a go; an accoustic Kraftwerk. Loads of simple, humm-able melodies. My personal favourite is track 5 "Telephone and Rubber band", which I realised I first heard on an advert for Mobile phones years ago.

Ideal "chill out" music; deft, closed loops of melody. As restful as chinese green tea, which I am sure they serve in the Penguin Cafe.

Buy it, you'll like it!

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