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Side by Side: Arthur Jeffes of Penguin Cafe on Bell Orchestre's House Music

19.9  2021

 

Sometimes there is no greater joy than watching your friends realise their vision. Pride on a personal and professional level, you get to know more about people through their work, their art, their dedication.

In our new column, Side by Side, Erased Tapes artists listen to and share their appreciation for each other's work, starting with
Penguin Cafe's Arthur Jeffes who wrote some lines about Bell Orchestre’s latest album House Music.

"It's been fun trying to work out how to describe this album in terms of genre or any other pigeon hole, though for me it all made more sense once i'd stopped trying. There's an organic flow from track to track and also within the tracks, like a narrative soundtrack to a dream which moves from scene to scene. I gather they recorded it all in one go — with some tweaking and studio magic in post — and you can feel the thread running through and the ideas that merge into new soundscapes. I got a sense that the musicians had played together for ages before the recording. There’s a sense of accuracy in the improvisation that I find reassuring. You can go along for the ride, feeling like you're in safe hands.

I've been playing the record in the house where we're based for lockdown and my various co-dwellers have passed through hearing it and always ask what it is with interested faces and nods. For me the standout track is V: Movement — things cohere around a central driving modulation and then a mute trumpet arrives followed by some vocal lines and suddenly it feels like you've been listening to a kind of Brazilian experimental jazz record for the last half an hour without realising. All this is done with a great sense of fun, energy and good humour. There are some excellent extreme compressions on the percussion which made me feel like the enthusiasm is bursting through the tape.

I look forward to seeing these guys live when the world re-aligns. Great album." — Arthur Jeffes, Penguin Cafe

· discover House Music