Emerging: Penguin Prison

(photo by Bjorn Iooss)

Bouncy bedroom pop that sounds unlike much of anything that's out right now or was out previously (though it'd be way easy to jump to name names that he may have derived his sound from), New York's Penguin Prison is on the receiving end of a huge amount of praise from high and low places as of late. He creates a sort of educated electronic pop music that combines a lot of what the listener would immediately get gripped by: an unusually simple mixture of 80s hook-laden New Wave and soulfully sung/spoken vocal lines. Interestingly though, the lyrics themselves are immensely sardonic and take the piss out of their topic, with a defensive sarcasm throughout and a kiss-off-the-real-emotion-while-sneering kind of writing style. It all rests on the arrangements, though, which to our ears at the moment are seriously seconded by very very few. "Animal Animal", the man's first single, got a huge response upon its release back in November, and now the performing arts school graduate is gearing up to release his debut album–which he's working on with members of Britpop band The Longpigs–this year. We're pretty sure that that's going to be impossibly large when it hits shelves.

(mp3)    Penguin Prison – Animal Animal (Kissy Sell Out's klub version)

(mp3)    Penguin Prison – Animal Animal (Jakwob remix)

Godspeed!