Pingvinorkestern are a Swedish band who have released two albums so far, 'Push' (2014) and 'Look, No Hands' (2017). Both excellent albums, they are at the gentler, melodic end of the prog spectrum and tracks vary considerably from almost-folk to circus music to polkas to songs in the same way that the early Lars Hollmer solo albums did. I find them quite charming, so if you're into Hollmer, Detektivbyran or Kauhukakara (and I'm talking to both of you!), then this is for you:
Last edited by alanterrill; 02-26-2019 at 09:30 AM.
Pingvinorkestern!
Sorry I missed an e out.Originally Posted by olivetti
The Lars Hollmer/Samla comparison seems very apt.
Sampling their work on Bandcamp, it's like they're two separate bands: one is instrumental with mallet instruments and very Samla. The other is vocal with acoustic guitars (mostly) and not very impressive, either compositionally or vocally. I think I'll put together a single best-of CD.
I appreciate the Bonzo Dog reference in the first album though!
Last edited by rcarlberg; 02-26-2019 at 10:21 AM.
Quite enjoyable, and it took me a minute or so to notice that they had no drummer. The violinist made me think of Pippi Longstocking, in middle age but just as quirky.
Pretty good stuff, relaxed and joyous. Thanks for posting.
My thoughts were very similar to yours at first listen - the vocal tracks do often starts very conventionally but I found most of them have an instrumental section that lifts them at some point and I thought the female vocals were very good indeed. A case in point is 'Save me', which starts in a pleasant if unexceptional mode, but after a brief instrumental section the voice comes back as a wordless choir and the song shifts and the track becomes quite beautiful. I deleted a couple of tracks, edited another two and then tried to burn them onto a CD only to find that I had 82 mins of music, so it's gone onto two CDs after all.
I googled Pingvinorkestern and discovered it means Penguin Orchestra in Norwegian, though there's nothing of Penguin Cafe Orchestra in them.
Interesting! I wonder what their background is? From their photos, they are getting on a bit so I'm not surprised they've heard of the Bonzo Dogs, Penguin Cafe and probably Lars Hollmer, but I suspect they've a long history in other bands.
I dig
Surprisingly(?) Discogs has almost zero history on any of them.
https://www.pingvinorkestern.se/contact
They apparently have also heard of Djam Karet.
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