Penguin Café - The Imperfect Sea (Vinyl LP Clear)

The Imperfect Sea is a 2017 album from Penguin Cafe. It is a modern classical and ambient record that takes ideas from dance and electronic music and rebuilds them with acoustic instruments. Penguin Cafe is led by composer and pianist Arthur Jeffes, who formed the group in 2009 to carry on the legacy of his father Simon Jeffes and the Penguin Cafe Orchestra. Jeffes has explained that the album swapped electronic layers for real ones: synth pads became string sections, synths became heavily effected pianos, and analogue drones became feedback loops ringing through a stone and a piano soundboard. Most of the music is his own. It sits alongside acoustic covers of Kraftwerk's 'Franz Schubert' and Simian Mobile Disco's 'Wheels Within Wheels', and a reworking of his father's 'Now Nothing'. The instrumentation reaches well beyond a chamber group, with cuatro, ukulele, celesta, dulcitone, harmonium, kalimba and shruti box woven through piano and strings. Arthur Jeffes produced the album, and Jamie Orchard-Lisle co-produced and mixed it. Additional strings were recorded by the City of Prague Philharmonic, arranged and conducted by Guy Protheroe. Mandy Parnell mastered the album at Black Saloon Studios. It was released on Erased Tapes on 5 May 2017. This edition presents the album on limited clear vinyl.