Name: GoGo Penguin
Members: Chris Illingworth (piano), Nick Blacka (double bass), Jon Scott (drums)
Interviewee: Chris Illingworth
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. 

For an even deeper look into their thoughts on music, read our expansive GoGo Penguin interview about improvisation.



Where does the impulse to create something come from for you? What role do often-quoted sources of inspiration like dreams, other forms of art, personal relationships, politics etc play?

I think a big part of being creative is to keep working hard. It tends to be in these moments of real graft that your mind is most ready to take these outside influences and turn them into something new and to use them in your work. Inspiration can come from anywhere, we’re always trying to keep our eyes and ears open as you never know where an idea might come from.

On our latest album Everything Is Going to Be OK we tapped more than ever into our own personal experiences as a source of inspiration. We’ve always tried to be honest and express some of ourselves in our music. But, because of everything we have gone through as individuals and a band over the last few years, this is a bigger feature than ever on the new album.

The drive to create has always been there, ever since I was a kid. I’m not really sure exactly where it comes from, but I guess a part of it is just the pure enjoyment of making something of your own, something new with your personality and character within it.

It’s playtime, something kids find natural but unfortunately something a lot of us lose as adults.

For you to get started, do there need to be concrete ideas – or what some have called a 'visualisation' of the finished work? What does the balance between planning and chance look like for you?

No, at the start there’s a lot of freedom and space for the music to develop naturally. If there’s a strong vibe to an idea then we’ll add it to the pot and keep working on it alongside other tracks. As they gradually take shape, they also begin to interact with each other. We’ll start to get ideas about certain tracks working well next to each other, those are the initial moments of the full album coming together.

As we keep working on the record, we’ll also begin to naturally develop some limitations and boundaries. On Everything Is Going to Be OK we started with an anything goes sort of attitude. We tried out a whole load of synths, electronics, sketches for tracks and early musical ideas and quickly we were able to cut out what didn’t feel instinctively right or necessary.

Nick has a good way of putting it, he’d say “we’re trimming the fat”.

Is there a preparation phase for your process? Do you require your tools to be laid out in a particular way, for example, do you need to do 'research' or create 'early versions'?

There are always early versions. We’ll demo everything we can, regardless of how basic or primitive the idea is. It’s the best way for us to not only remember the ideas we’ve come up with but also to be able to take a step back and reflect on them more objectively.

It helps the creative process, we’re better able to make decisions on what feels like it’s working and what isn’t, to begin to see the bigger picture of what the album might look like and to see the direction tracks want to go it and to help us find the next step.

What do you start with? How difficult is that first line of text, the first note?

I don’t really find coming up with those initial, embryonic ideas that difficult. As soon as an idea comes to me, I’ll sketch it out in some way – on paper, a quick recording on my phone, anything to get it out of my head and into the pot of ideas.

However, the thing is that loads of these will be rubbish or at least that when I revisit them with fresh eyes and ears, they won’t have that ‘thing’ about them that makes me excited about the idea and that makes me feel something. The difficulty lies in taking these ideas further, keeping the essence of what initially felt exciting about the sketch and turning it into something bigger and complete without losing that special something.

Especially in the digital age, the writing and production process tends towards the infinite. What marks the end of the process? How do you finish a work?

I think it’s just important to know when to stop and move on. There can be a tendency to always want to make something ‘better.’ But often I think that can go the other way. Not knowing when to let go can start to detract from the music and take away some of the elements that made the work special in the first place.

We’re lucky to have great producers who we’ve worked with for years; our sound engineer Joe Reiser is often referred to as the fourth member of GoGo Penguin and he’s worked alongside Brendan Williams whenever we’ve been in the studio making an album together back since v2.0. They great at knowing when to take a break, to ease the pressure that a recording session can sometimes bring and are excellent at calling it when we have the takes we need for a track and it’s time to move on.

It’s a team effort and over the years I think we’ve got better and better at knowing when the track just feels right and we’ve said what we want to say with the music.