condition (record/cover): NM / EX- (cut-out)

The first Penguin Cafe Orchestra album, recorded between 1974 and 1976 and originally released in 1976 on Brian Eno's Obscure label as OBS 7, the seventh and one of the most surprising entries in that ten-record series. Music From The Penguin Cafe established the band's entire aesthetic: chamber-music miniaturism crossed with English-folk inflections, Brazilian rhythms, electric ukulele and a sense of charmed eccentricity that nobody else in mid-1970s British music shared.

Simon Jeffes, the band's founder and principal composer, had conceived the project in 1972-73 after a vision on a beach in the south of France that produced the band's early poem ("I am the proprietor of the Penguin Cafe. I will tell you things at random"). With cellist Helen Liebmann and a rotating cast that included Steve Nye (producer, keyboards) and Gavyn Wright (violin), Jeffes recorded what would become known as the "Penguin Cafe Quartet" sessions across two years on location in various venues, with Eno serving as executive producer. The result is a record like no other in the 1970s: "Penguin Cafe Single", "From The Colonies", "In A Sydney Motel", "Coronation", "Giles Farnaby's Dream", "Pigtail" and "Zopf", each piece a small chamber composition for unusual ensemble.

The pressing on offer is the Editions EG reissue catalogued EGED 27, the format the album took once Eno's Obscure series wound down and EG continued issuing back-catalog material in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Same music, EG sleeve design with the Emily Young reissue painting. The early document of a singular discography in British music.