Music From the Penguin Cafe

this was very good some nice chill instrumentals

I thought classical/art music wasn't allowed on the list

Hmm, not quite sure how to rate this. I didn't disklike it, though I doubt I'll honestly listen to it again. I liked the purely instrumental bits more than the ones with vocals, on the whole. Erm, three it is.

Now this was just delightful. The arrangements are great. I love the way the electric keys blend with the strings. The build and release of tension in The Sound Of Someone… is fantastic. Really great album that I never would have heard otherwise. Favorites were In A Sydney Motel, The Sound Of Someone…, and Chartered Flight.

Wonderfully eccentric in places. Interesting stuff, not the worst thing I’ve ever heard but probably won’t revisit anytime soon.

I am kinda mixed when it comes to Music From The Penguin Cafe. This album has a very unique sound, probably something that i would hear in Animal Crossing or something that feels like it would go on to influence Sufjan Stevens. In terms of the music it's basically music with a very relaxing feel and probably would have worked much better on me if i didn't have the day off work when reviewing this but i still appreciate the sound nonetheless. My problem with the album though is that sometimes it can get annoying. It has a bit of a tendency to pick some odd instrument choices in some songs that really don't sound good. But when i consider that was mostly just for two songs, the good outweighs the bad here so it's an alright album.
Best Song: The Sound of Someone You Love Who's Going Away and It Doesn't Matter
Worst Song: Zopf: Milk

Minimalist Avant folk pop not quite ambient music from another world.

Utterly charming and never quite heading in the direction you expect, this is full of beautiful surprises.

this was so cute and i enjoyed myself very much

I like this album. It’s basically a 00s electronic ambient lp played on strings instruments in the 70’s.

Never heard of this project before and from the first song sounds very interesting. After listening to the whole album I thought it had Eno influence and it turns out Eno is indeed the producer here which explains a lot. Interesting mix of chamber, folk, prog and other styles, definitely strong 4 stars and REVISIT worthy

Very cool stuff. Reminds me of Kronos Quartet. Definitely something to listen to again.

Kivan chilli loungelevy!

Oooh, I LIKE this. Experimental, yet tuneful, absolutely perfect listening for being cocooned in blankets with my headphones on on a cold winter night.

Interesting, but not enough so

Hmm, well, I have no idea what the fuck this is. That cover art, and that band name, and that album name sure are arresting. I honestly don't know exactly what I was expecting, although if you forced me to guess at gunpoint, I would have said "weirdo prog rock". And I would have been close, at least in spirit. I think this is like contemporary classical/avant-pop, and as it turns out, that is a combination of things which, at least superficially, resembles prog. The more I investigate this, it feels like the less I know. I guess Eno was involved in producing this: on some level that just makes sense. But Who's Zopf? I guess only a few tracks here were by the Penguin Cafe Orchestra proper, and some truncated form of the group wrote and perfromed a lot of the material. I've even seen conflicting info as to who even made the cover art. And this is all on top of the music sounding the way that it does. But is it good? Yeah, I Think so. A lot of the Penguin Cafe Orchestra songs end up kind of lounge music-y, but it works on Penguin Cafe Single, and The Sound Of Someone You Love Who's Going Away And It Doesn't Matter pretty well. The avant-garde slant is still there and the lounge feel ends up colliding with some really discordant ideas, and it's really interesting. However, I think that Hugebaby and Chartered Flight are a slog, and this could have done to end after The Sound Of Someone...It Doesn't Matter. This album to me is honestly kind of cemented by the Zopf stuff though. Most of side 1 is the Zopf material, and it consists largely of short audio experiments and compositional ideas. The rapid fire nature of this part of the album, coupled with its weird and wonderful nature is pretty compelling. A couple of (admittedly pretty beefy) slogs aside, this is a really cool piece of lesser known 70's avant garde stuff. I don't known if it's the sort of thing that everyone needs to hear before they die, but it did enhance my life. Definitely check this out if you like Eno too, he produced this, and he's got some fingerprints all over this thing.

Batter than Coldplay

I like this. When I first looked at it, I thought it might be more esoteric 70s prog, and I wasn’t exactly champing at the bit for it. But this didn’t come across as pretentious to me. Experimental, certainly, but not pretentious. I’m not certain why it was chosen for this list, but I’m not complaining.

I liked when she was liked ~MiLk~.

I always liked that long song and thought I should check out the rest of the album. I didn't miss anything.

track 9 is great and a few others were good but overall its a 3

I'm finding it hard to review this one. It's mostly just a very chill time that plays nicely in the background. It kind of passed me by, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. It's pleasant, but kind of strange in places. Much of it would play well as a movie score.

I didn't love it. I liked it in a very non-committal way.