Is anyone here familiar with the Penguin Café Orchestra?

[Rae]

I heard some music from these guys last year in a BBC documentary about the Large Hadron Collider with Brian Cox (you guys should all check it out, he's dreamy), then the same song cropped up in some NPR program so I decided to check them out. $6 including shipping got me their Signs of Life LP off of eBay. I like it. It's way off the beaten path for me, although I do have some other similar stuff like Turtle Island String Quartet in my collection. It's good music for studying-- kind of makes me feel smarter just listening to it. What would you call this genre? New age? Prog? Neo-classical or Modern Classical? Usually when I think of the latter it conjures up Kronos Quartet or Steve Reich or something a little more avant-garde...

~Rae

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/4c/Signs_Of_Life_%28album%29.jpg

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[Troy]

Yeah, I remember them from about 20 years ago. Jazzy Newage.

I had one album and never really warmed to it. Too lite for me.

You should try to find the Group 87 album from about the same time. They were an interesting prototype newage band that could still rock. Mostly made up of ex-Zappa band members.