Part 1
Name: GoGo Penguin
Members: Chris Illingworth (piano), Nick Blacka (double bass), Jon Scott (drums)
Interviewee: Chris Illingworth, Nick Blacka
Nationality: British
Current release: GoGo Penguin's new full-length album Everything Is Going to Be OK is out via XXIM Records/Sony Masterworks.
If you enjoyed this GoGo Penguin interview and would like to know more about the trio and their music, visit their official website. The band also have profiles on Instagram, Facebook, and twitter.
We highly recommend our earlier GoGo Penguin conversation about their creative process.
When did you first start getting interested in musical improvisation?
[Chris] It was very early on; I don’t think I would really have been thinking of it as improvisation at the time but looking back now it was definitely the beginning of improvisation becoming part of me as a musician.
I started playing piano when I was 8 and studied classical music initially. I remember learning that even though there are notes on the page that you must stick to when playing a particular piece, there is a huge amount of freedom in interpreting those notes and the way you play them. It’s a fine balance, respecting the original intention of the composer and doing what they ask of you while also adding your own personality and ideas, to some degree making the music your own.
As a kid I sometimes took it too far, I didn’t think about the limits of what some people would think was acceptable, it was just fun playing around with the music, trying different ideas and realizing how that changed the feeling and character of the music.
[Nick] For me it was when around 16 years old. I started playing bass guitar when I was 13 but a few years later I was interested in progressing my playing ability and checking out jazz and funk music. I managed to get on to a really amazing A level music course with really good teachers. All the students had to do compulsory things like choir and big band every week.
My bass teacher at the time was a double bassist called Steve Berry. He really turned my attention to jazz and improvisation and set me on the path to getting my first double bass. It was him who inspired me to check out jazz and that began my journey into improvised forms of music. I then went on to study for a jazz degree at Leeds College of Music.
Which artists, approaches, albums or performances involving prominent use of improvisation captured your imagination in the beginning?
[Chris] The album which immediately comes to mind is The Köln Concert by Keith Jarrett. It was actually my maths teacher at school who passed this and some Oscar Peterson records on to me when she heard me playing piano one day. They were my introduction to jazz.
I’d heard about Hunter Thompson typing out works by other authors like F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway as a learning exercise, to try to get into the mindset of those he looked up to and better understand their thought process, so I tried to do the same by transcribing sections of The Köln Concert but it was way beyond my abilities at the time.
The other big early influence on me for improvisation was the Esbjörn Svensson Trio. They were the ones who really showed me you could do something new and different with the piano.
[Nick] The first inspiration for regarding improvisation was Jaco Pastorius. I think every bassist goes through a Jaco Pastorius phase and I was no different.
I then checked out Ray Brown with the Oscar Peterson Trio. I love Ray Brown’s bass playing. His walking basslines are like a work of art in their own and he was also an incredible soloist. Ray Brown led onto Christian McBride. When I was at college, I bought two records that really influenced my bass playing. One was called Parker’s Mood with Christian Mcbride, Stephen Scott and Roy Hargrove, the other was called Fingerpainting with Christian McBride, Nicholas Payton, and Mark Whitfield. Both are trios without drums.
My best friend was a pianist, and we didn’t know any good jazz drummers at the time, so we worked hard on trying to create a sense of momentum and swing without a drummer. It helped me develop quite a hard driving propulsive style of playing. Even though I was way more focused on straight ahead jazz at that time, I feel like these qualities have stayed with me into GoGo Penguin.
What, would you say, are the key ideas behind your approach to improvisation? Do you see yourself as part of a tradition or historic lineage?
[Chris] Jazz definitely has played a role in who I am as a musician and how I improvise but so has classical, electronica, rock, hip-hop and tons of other styles. This goes for the band in general too and we’re often reminded how our music doesn’t fit neatly into one category.
So no, I don’t see myself or the band as part of a particular tradition or lineage. We’re three individuals with different musical backgrounds, we share similarities in tastes and ideas but also have many differences so when we write collaboratively, we just use the elements, techniques and ideas we need to serve the music and these could come from anywhere, rarely if ever from one style of music and it’s traditions.
I think if anything my style of improvisation has been influenced more by elements I picked up from the classical world. Sometimes I’ll take a solo in a track or change things dramatically but more often than that the notes of a particular track might stay generally the same from gig to gig and there’ll be many small variations and tweaks in dynamics, tone, articulation - all the sort of personal touches you might make to a piece of classical music which would make your interpretation wildly different to another performer’s version.
What was your own learning curve / creative development like when it comes to improvisation - what were challenges and breakthroughs?
[Nick] When I was 19, I was often the house double bassist in a jazz club in Manchester called Matt & Phred’s Jazz Club. The club is still there under different ownership these days, but it was more of a jazz club back then.
I showed up terrified most nights as I was very young and inexperienced and sometimes it was difficult and often humiliating to be playing with older musicians who were often a lot better than I was at the time. Even though it wasn’t always easy, this experience helped me hugely.
I think being in an environment night after night, playing with different musicians that demands you to step out of your comfort zone was hugely rewarding for me. That’s really where I cut my teeth as an improviser.
Tell me about your instrument and/or tools, please. How would you describe the relationship with it? What are its most important qualities and how do they influence the musical results and your own performance?
[Chris] I’ve incorporated more electronic elements into my setup on our latest record, but the piano is still the core instrument. It’s been a major part of my life for so long and like any long-term relationship you go through ups and downs.
I’ve always enjoyed playing around with electronic music from way back. As a kid I had an Atari ST with a couple of basic MIDI keyboards and a Roland MC-307 that I’d make tracks on. I love playing synths, writing beats on a drum machine, playing around with effects pedals but still I feel most comfortable and natural sat at the piano. Being able to combine this though with new electronics, particularly my Eurorack modular rig and the Strega made by Make Noise, has been incredible. In many ways these don’t feel separate any more from the piano, they have just become part of the whole setup, the instruments I can write and perform with.
A good example of this is one of our new tracks called “Soon Comes Night”.
I created a bouncing ball effect on the piano, something I’ve heard done before on synths but never with an acoustic instrument the way we have done. This wouldn’t have been possible or even really something we would have tried had we not fused the electronic and acoustic elements together the way we have on this latest record.
[Nick] Up until this new record, I almost exclusively played double bass. Occasionally I played bass guitar too, but my preference was usually the upright bass.
I remember when I bought my first ever double bass, and it was stood in the corner of my bedroom and I lay in bed just looking at it, absolutely fascinated by its shape and contours of the wood. I still feel that when I see a beautiful instrument and the double bass often just feels like an extension of myself when I’m fully in the moment of a performance. I think there’s an earthy and organic feel to the instrument and even playing a single note can draw out a beautiful rich resonance that still excites me.
On the new album, I also play a Moog Grandmother synth for the first time, and I absolutely love playing it live because it’s still functioning in the bass player’s role but has a different tonal quality to the double bass and it really cuts through. It’s very powerful.
I think I’m enjoying experimenting with new things and how we can combine them with the three acoustic instruments we’ve always had in the group. I now have a midi foot pedal that can trigger my synth whilst I’m playing the double bass at the same time, which is very exciting to me.
