GoGo Penguin The British Bad Plus with Man Made Object

GoGo Penguin

GoGo Penguin has been named the British Bad Plus, which is predictable. The groups featuring  a pianist Chris Lllingworth, bassis Nick Blacka and drummer Rob Turner as well as the gift for exploration beyond customary genre boundaries. they’re a lot more interested in the nuances of groove, and in the contact points between acoustic and machine music, than in jazz as most beboppers know it. Chris Illingworth’s looping piano motifs with their casual classical flourishes, Nick Blacka’s bowed bass and Rob Turner’s hustling drums sometimes fuse with a hip equanimity reminiscent of Robert Glasper; Weird Cat and the folksy have an idea that GoGo tunes don’t have to be sparse; and the captivating Smarra is a highlight for its threading of an echoey, synth-mimicking throb through a humming undertow toward a deluge of cymbals. It still feels like clubbing music, and perhaps best heard live, but plenty of house and techno fans might be surprised by how good at partying three closet-jazzers can be.

But whereas the Bad Plus is a jazz trio that taps into rock and the avant-garde, GoGo Penguin’s music, as evidenced on its new release, “Man Made Object” (Blue Note), conjuring pastoral imagery while loosely exploring scientific concepts. Between its title and multifaceted sonic approach, the LP seems directly influenced by Koyaanisqatsi, bringing to mind the same sorts of aerial views we see during the movie’s 86 minutes.

What GoGo Penguin borrows from jazz isn’t its harmonies or rhythmic complexities, but its energy, spontaneity and derived in large part from the syncopated rhythms and angular melodies of electronica and trip-hop. For its New York City debut, the trio performed at Winter Jazzfest, the annual miracle of a festival here that presented some 120 acts in mid-January. GoGo Penguin’s appearance spoke more to the series’ catholic view of jazz than to the trio’s preferred style. During its set at (Le) Poisson Rouge, a Greenwich Village club, the audience was at times mesmerized by the jittery tension in the music of bassist Nick Blacka, pianist Chris Illingworth and drummer Rob Turner. To ask whether GoGo Penguin plays jazz misses the point, not only of Winter Jazzfest, but of the sense of adventure in contemporary popular music. 

“Man Made Object” finds an acoustic trio performing through-compositions, pieces derived from jams, and songs that began as a series of tones and beats created on sequencing software. An example of the last of these, “Protest” features racing rhythms, a funk interlude from Mr. Blacka and a stately top line played by Mr. Illingworth. Similarly, “Branches Break,” which builds slowly and beautifully with chiming piano chords, was inspired by the electronic improvisational music of Kieran Hebden, who works under the guise of Four Tet. The electronic composers Richard James (better known as Aphex Twin) and Amon Tobin are among the trio’s influences, as is Esbjörn Svensson, the late jazz pianist.
On the new album, the trio also reveals its affection for classical music. “All Res,” the first track, opens with an impressionistic piano motif by Mr. Illingworth, who is accompanied by Mr. Blacka on a bowed bass that sounds much like a cello. During a conversation in mid-January here, the members referred to compositions by Chopin, Debussy and Mahler to illustrate the emotional subtext of their music.

Yet the feel of jazz is an undeniable presence in the music of GoGo Penguin, as in Mr. Turner’s swinging performance in “Surrender to Mountain.” Messrs. Illingsworth and Turner, who studied at the Royal College of Music in Manchester, England, met at a gig in which they played be-bop and straight-ahead jazz. Mr. Blacka studied jazz at the Leeds College of Music; Ray Brown, Paul Chambers and Oscar Pettiford were among the bassists he admired. Despite their affection for the form, the members agree that they aren’t a jazz trio. They are experimentalists in pursuit of superior improvisational music.
The groove matters most, they said, but it helps to have the foundation to extemporize; or, as Mr. Turner put it, “There’s freedom, but you have to know the notes.” Most satisfying, said Mr. Blacka, is “the challenge of trying to take these new ideas somewhere. It becomes the most natural thing to do.”

GoGo Penguin has been slow to invade the U.S. “Man Made Object” is its third album; its second, 2014’s “v2.0,” was nominated for a Mercury Prize as the best album by artists based in the U.K. or Ireland. (“Dead” by the hip-hop trio Young Fathers won that year’s prize.) GoGo Penguin built a fan base in Europe by ignoring genre. Mr. Illingworth pointed to a recent tour in which the band performed at a house-music festival in Croatia and a concert hall in Germany. He said GoGo Penguin’s intent is to stir a visceral reaction akin to the one the band members felt as they composed their pieces. 

Signed now to Blue Note, the venerable jazz label, GoGo Penguin wondered how it would fare in New York. “Here’s this trio from the north of England playing at a jazz event and we’re not really jazz,” said Mr. Blacka. But at the Winter Jazzfest gig and the following night at Mercury Lounge, a club on the Lower East Side, the band members discovered fans knew their music and were eager to hear it unfold in concert. The bottom line: “People were dancing,” said Mr. Illingworth.

The next test in the U.S. comes in mid-April when GoGo Penguin will face a varied and perhaps distracted audience at the massive Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in Indio, Calif., which isn’t known for presenting improvisational music by acoustic trios. The risk in taking the gig seems a part of GoGo Penguin’s strategy to make music for people who are open to receiving it and are delighted by its willingness to defy convention. As “Man Made” proves, the trio knows what it’s doing and does it exceptionally well.

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