Manchester-based acoustic-electronic piano trio GoGo Penguin unleash a joyful, uplifting new track called "Ascent," which brilliantly captures 2022’s move-on-up zeitgeist. Formed in 2012 its sophomore album v2.0 was nominated in 2014 for the Mercury Music Prize and in 2016, the trio signed to Blue Note Records, releasing a trio of acclaimed albums: ‘Man Made Object’, ‘A Humdrum Star’ and ‘GoGo Penguin’, as well as two EPS and a remix album ‘GGP/RMX’. They were Blue Note’s best-selling contemporary instrumental artists and sold in excess of 300,000 albums.
Fittingly entitled ‘Ascent’, it’s the genre-defying Manchester trio’s first new music since 2020’s rapturously received fifth album, ‘GoGo Penguin’ and is the first to feature new drummer, Jon Scott. The release of "Ascent" also marks the beginning of the band’s new partnership with Sony Music Masterwork’s cutting-edge new XXIM Records label.
The band composes and performs as a unit and the band members refer to their music as “acoustic-electronica”. Their largely (but not exclusively) acoustic music draws on break-beats, classical influences, jazz, minimalist piano melodies, powerful bass lines, drums inspired from electronica and anthemic riffs.
Says the band’s exploratory pianist, Chris Illingworth: “The composition takes its inspiration from the duality often found in the big events in our lives, moments which can simultaneously make us feel both loved and isolated, fearful but confident, proud and humbled. ‘Ascent’ expresses the journey through these experiences in life, moving forward into the unknown, but with hope not fear.”
“The pandemic brought us many challenges, as it did for everyone,” says bassist Nick Blacka. “The main issue was not being able to tour but it did also enable us to reflect on the group as a whole. It was a time of growth, a chance to remind ourselves of what’s important to us and to become more unified as a group and as friends and becoming stronger as a result”.
Jon Scott’s name had been the first to come up when the group was looking for a new drummer. Nick Blacka had played jazz gigs with him when they were each starting out in Manchester years ago and they had subsequently often crossed paths, notably when Scott was touring with Ethiopian legend, Mulatu Astatke. Says Nick Blacka: “After one rehearsal, a couple of beers and a pizza, we knew we’d found our man!” Continues Chris Illingworth: “We had time to jam old tunes and try out new ideas. The key thing that makes Jon a great fit is his appreciation of many styles of music and his confidence in combining and adapting elements from them to suit a given track, thus making something new and unique. Things went really“ well very quickly, and we were able to get straight into the studio and make the most of the positivity and momentum.”
In December 2021, the freshly minted trio decamped to Peter Gabriel’s ‘Real World’ studios in Box, Wiltshire – a magical rural setting, surrounded by beautiful countryside and offering peace and quiet and tranquillity. Chris Illingworth notes: “It was just what we all needed at the end of a tough year and a great start to the new chapter with Jon.”
The first fruit of those sessions, ‘Ascent’, commences with a rippling rhythmic pattern which Chris Illingworth had already devised. At Real World, the band experimented with other ways of executing it, eventually running it as a sequence on Nick’s Moog Grandmother synth, and then, as the track unfolded, with Jon picking up the beat - in Nick Blacka’s words: “replicating the feel of it but making it his own after the synth beat fades out.”
This combination of “the human and the machine”, says Chris Illingworth “will remain core to GoGo Penguin’s MO.”
Marking an all-new chapter in the bands story, ‘Ascent’ lays the ground for an EP to be released later this year and marks the start of the group’s new partnership with Sony Music’s XXIM Records label. Says Chris Illingworth: “XXIM is a new label focussing on imaginative and innovative instrumental music which crosses genres so it feels like a natural home for us”
