Intelligent pop: best defined by musical acts such as Penguin Prison. Penguin Prison is Chris Glover from NYC. His music oozes seemingly effortless talent, but his road was a bumpy one. After performing arts school Penguin Prison’s style bounced around until he settled on high-fi synth pop and he is one of the artists on the forefront of the low-fi rebellion. Low-fi was born by musicians recording on at-home, cheap equipment and eventually it became cool to recreate the rough, vintage sound on purpose. Don’t get me wrong, the do it yourself sound is great, but I am pretty amped the movement towards clear, crisp production with understandable lyrics is well underway thanks to Hey Champ, Bright Light Bright Light, Binary’s LexiconDon and of course Penguin Prison. I’m a fan of everything Glover pumps out because any track with the Penguin Prison stamp is nothing less than a polished dance jam about real life-the good, the bad and the ugly.

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Passion Pit – Little Secrets (Penguin Prison Remix)

I can’t think of anything better than a Passion Pit track, unless Penguin Prison does a stellar remix of it…case and point ‘Little Secrets.’ The hard synth layers of the original are peeled back and scaled down to reveal a piano melody laden with bits of drums, symbols and strings throughout. Listening to the soft, gentle vocals is sweet ear candy and they make the sound more approachable for the average listener. The last 55 seconds are my favorite as each individual sound disappears and I am released from the spell I was under.

“Let this be our little secret, no one needs to know we’re feeling…higher and higher and higher.”

This tastes like a late night to me. Dancing until you get kicked out and never wanting the night to end, but that is when beers, friends and some really good drunk conversation comes in. I love watching the sun come up, but I’m not THAT much of an early riser, however on one particularly late night after listening to some particularly good tunes I did just that. I remember walking into a diner at 430am and it was still dark, but as I ate my grilled cheese and drank my chocolate milk (yes, I am 5) I couldn’t stop thinking about how I was literally watching the sun rise. It is a surreal feeling when you know that the rest of the world is sleeping and they are missing everything you are experiencing right at this moment. The silence feels good…in an eerie way. The night made me think of life experience and not in the job sense, but simply in life. Doing some crazy things to say you did em’ and then just sitting back…living life and getting high off it. I wonder what stories I would have if I stopped thinking and let life just happen…

Posted by: Kim