Penguin Cafe Orchestra - Union Cafe - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

A sense of optimism infuses Penguin Cafe's fifth studio album Rain Before Seven... not the braggadocious, overconfident kind, but more a blithe, self-effacing optimism in keeping with the national character. Even when all signs point to the contrary, it operates within the certainty that things are going to be alright. Probably. The title comes from an old weather proverb with the rhyming prognostication - fine before eleven - hinting at a happy ending, irrespective of the science InchI found it in a book and I'd never heard it before,Inch says Arthur Jeffes, leader of Penguin Cafe. InchIt has faintly optimistic overtones and I quite like it. It's fallen out of usage recently, but it does describe English weather patterns coming in off the Atlantic.Inch

Called InchComedy's Lovable Queen of MeanInch (New York Times) and InchHoward Stern on estrogenInch (Toronto Star), Lisa Lampanelli is the insult comic for a new generation. Now, with a one hour special airing on Comedy Central, she makes her major-tag debut with that same outrageous, in-your-face performance on CD and DVD with Take It Like a Man, recorded live at the Improv in Hollywood, FL. Shocking and hilarious, no-hold's-barred and politically incorrect, Lampanelli is Don Rickles with breasts and major PMS.

On October 4th Erased Tapes present Handfuls of Night ' the highly anticipated follow-up to Penguin Cafe's much applauded 2017 album The Imperfect Sea 'inspired by the Antarctic, Arthur Jeffes' journey following in Scott's footsteps and our penguin friends that reside there. Using gut-stringed violins, viola, cello, bass, percussion, upright and grand pianos, synthesiser, harmonium and more, Arthur Jeffes and his cohorts have crafted a vivid series of panoramic sonic landscapes, that are as rich in cerebral poignancy as they are in emotional depth. Bookended by the atmospheric ambient piano pieces 'Winter Sun' and 'Midnight Sun', the album traverses glacial minimalism with ease, combining their signature contemporary classical panoramas, such as the melancholic yet upbeat lead track 'At the Top of the Hill, They Stood...' and the colossal cinematic piece 'Chapter', with the crystalline folktronica on 'Pythagorus on the Line Again a re-visiting and continuation of the Penguin Cafe Orchestra's 1993 Union Cafe song on the principles of harmonics. Handfuls of Night began life after Greenpeace commissioned Jeffes to write four pieces of music corresponding to four breeds of penguins, to help raise awareness for the endangered Antarctic seas. A fundraising evening at Earth in Hackney followed, where Penguin Cafe premiered the four songs named after their feathered counterparts to a sold out audience; the rousing contemporary folk inflected 'Chinstrap', the mournful and minimalistic 'Adelie', stoic and rhythmic 'The Life of an Emperor' and the wistful, string-laden 'Gentoo Origin'.