GOGO PENGUIN | LIVE REVIEW
Royal Welsh College Of Music & Drama, Cardiff, Fri 16 Nov
In legging it through the Canton football crowd to make the rarified surroundings of the Royal Welsh College for some cutting-edge jazz, I felt that there couldn’t be more of a contrast between two worlds. There was, however, one consistency, with Cymraeg to be heard both in the football songs and amongst the GoGo Penguin audience as they throng around the vast café space.
I arrived just in time for Andreya Triana’s supporting turn, where she is dressed in a bright orange harem pants and jacket ensemble, like a funky escapee from Guantanamo. Triana, who is a little bit Whitney and a touch Brittany (Howard, of Alabama Shakes, that is) emits some strong star wattage. Backed only by a guitarist, she packs some soul wallop into her songs, with That’s Alright With Me, I Give You My Heart and Broke all being dissections of the heart in this marvel of architecture.
GoGo Penguin, a trio of dextrous gladiators of jazztronica, stride businesslike onto the stage and start off with Prayer, as a foreboding piano and the double bass fight to be heard. With white searchlights, appropriate for the Armistice centenary, and golden shafts of light picking out swirling smoke, the effect is one of a gathering storm. Raven and One Percent follow, with sleigh bells preceding an intricate bass solo; quicksilver fingers from Blacka lead the piano into a swelling drumbeat which grows in ferocity until it almost topples the song, before an astonishing stop-start outro adds a ballistic finale, with strobelights flashing, prompting a roar of appreciation. Most of the tunes are from new LP A Humdrum Star and quite a few are plucked from predecessor V2.0, with 2016’s Man Made Object almost entirely overlooked and probably over-toured.
Bardo sees house music synth overlaid by a beautiful piano coda, then echoed by the double bass riff and math rock drums. Ocean In A Drop is a drop-dead gorgeous tune, with Illingworth’s repeating piano melody and the build to a dramatic crescendo evoking an Attenbrough nature programme. Hopopono, one of their best known, is aired as an encore with pirouetting piano set to a floaty bassline from Blacka, but new tune Transient State is a highlight: a skittering drumbeat backing a muscular double bass line, and an ecstatic piano house riff which evolves into a fiendishly complex and fluid show of piano skills. In between I’m pretty sure I heard Fort and In Amber given an airing, in a performance that will long be preserved in golden memories.
words CHRIS SEAL