Penguin Cafe share ‘From a Blue Temple’ — the latest single from the tenth anniversary reissue of their seminal debut album, A Matter of Life… 2021, out April 29 on Erased Tapes.
Reminding us of their outside-the-box approach to composition, ‘From a Blue Temple' sees Arthur Jeffes incorporate his surroundings and bending what should or shouldn’t be considered an instrument, in order to create something magical.
“We'd been playing with a big piece of structural glass in the studio and had noticed that while it was impossible to smash, it did make a lovely low dong when you touched it, once you put a decent contact mic on it. So this became a big thing in the track, along with the main motif which is a musical rendering of the Fibonacci sequence (1,1,2,3,5,8). I wrote Blue Temple after having a crazy dream about a dusty town on the plains, overlooked by a mountain with a big blue temple on top. A procession of strange beings would come down to the town periodically playing this tune with a huge gong…”
A Matter of Life… 2021 will be available digitally and on vinyl for the first time.
from
A Matter of Life... 2021,
track released April 15, 2022
Composed by Arthur Jeffes
Published by Editions Penguin Cafe
Produced by Arthur Jeffes
Recorded and mixed by Jamie Orchard-Lisle
and Arthur Jeffes at Hippodrome Place in London, 2010
on a Trident Series 70 with EMT 262 plate, TLA 5013 dual valve EQ
and C-1 compressor with two Metric Halo 2882 and a Digidesign 192
Musical director Vincent Greene
Mastered by Zino Mikorey
Performers
Arthur Jeffes — piano / harmonium
Vincent Greene — viola / güiro
Andy Waterworth — double bass / bass guitar
Rebecca Waterworth — cello / paper percussion
Photographs by Alex Kozobolis
Based on the original detail from a painting by Emily Young
Design by Studio Torsten Posselt
Art direction Robert Raths
©+℗ 2022 Erased Tapes Records Ltd. All tapes erased.