Electric Penguins are a trio of studio rats schooled in the broad church of electronic, ambient and general esoteric idioms. Their collective pedigree is worth noting – Mark Cummins has worked with associates of both the Floyd and Massive Attack; Sean Quinn was previously signed to Eno and Roxy’s EG imprint and worked with Steve Hillage; Paul Murphy does TV and radio commissions in his own studio when he’s not moonlighting as a producer and fraternising with Bowie’s band.
The ensemble’s debut album is, as you might expect, an inventive and accomplished adventure in not-so-modern recording. The Penguins may be numbered among a growing cabal of reactionaries bypassing generic Pro-Tools and digital trickery in favour of analogue bump and grind (Moogs, Mellotrons and Farfisas abound).
The opening ‘Gelb’ is a quite lovely slow-mo glide between Sigur Ros ice sculptures and Edge’s 1986 Captive soundtrack (specifically ‘Rowena’s Theme’), all breathy vocals and cinemascopic piano. Its colour coded counterpart ‘Blau’ is another beauty – slow Nyman-esque airs punctuated by sonar echo.
The collective work best when the vocals are muted and the words ephemeral: ‘Supergirl’ boasts elegantly 80s vocals and soft synth pop textures that suggest China Crisis by way of Air, ‘Lonnie’ is beguilingly moody (a little heavy on the vocoder, mind), while ‘Soft Landing’, as its title suggests, is a sort of light-headed High Llamas space-off stitched with Duane Eddy guitar.
The Penguins excel at atmospheres; orthodox song structures ill become them. For instance, ‘Transatlantic’ begins as a masterclass in German precision-engineered motorik and ends up as John Foxx-era Ultravox robot pop, blemished by a flaccid vocal and lame lyric (“The TV man is heading up the parade”).
Viewed in widescreen, Goodbye To The Electric Penguins is a triumph of sound over songcraft. Next time the intrepid trio might do well to dispense with the songwriterly strictures altogther and just go with the, um, floe. For now though, this is an intriguing debut, rich in ideas and wilfully different.