It's May today. It doesn't feel like May, it feels like it's been winter forever, that New Year and January can only have been a few weeks ago and that the spring is still weeks or months away. The sun occasionally shows itself but the wind and rain are never far away, the blossom appeared a few weeks ago and there's the hint of green on the trees but it does not feel like it is May.
One f last year's albums that I missed and caught up with a while ago was Rain Before Seven... by Penguin Cafe, an album that lives in a world where alternative music, folk and classical crossover, traditional and classical acoustic instruments but with a sound and style that could easily fit in to an ambient/ alternative set or gig. Penguin Cafe's leader Arthur Jeffes recorded the album with a post- Covid, post- lockdown optimism in mind, and much of the ten instrumental tracks have that feel, a rhythm and a bounce, a giddiness or lightness that suggest something new, rebirth maybe.
The standout track for me is Galahad, written in a 15/ 8 time signature and a tribute to Arthur's much loved dog of that name.
Post- Covid means different things to different people. It lives on with us following Isaac's death from Covid in November '23 in a way that may be different for other people. But Rain Before Seven... definitely has a feel and a sound I can recognise and identify with. Spring? Yes please.
Arthur's father Simon Jeffes was the founder of the original Penguin Cafe Orchestra, an avant/ classical/ pop/ folk outfit formed way back in the 70s who fond some success in the 1980s and 90s. Simon's vision for the PCO came to him while hallucinating with food poisoning in France in 1972. One of their tracks, their best known, is Music For A Found Harmonium- named after Simon found a harmonium in a back street in Kyoto while touring Japan in 1982. It's a lively, affecting, ascending and descending instrumental, a reel, catchy as you like and always guaranteed to raise a smile. It crossed over in all sorts of places, eventually finding its way into the DJ sets of Jose Padilla and Alfredo in Ibiza. It's a song we became a little obsessed with in the early/ mid 90s, especially when it was included on the first Cafe del Mar compilation and we got hold of a copy, playing it when returning from nights out, the hypnotic riff circling round and round our rented flat.
PCO released a best of in 1996 (a year before Simon Jeffes sadly died from a brain tumour). Along with the original version was a cover of Music For A Found Harmonium by Patrick Street, the jig and reel element taken up by the Irish folk band. I love both versions. It's since been used in films and (inevitably) in adverts.
Music For A Found Harmonium (Patrick Street Version)