GoGo Penguin Releases 1st Track With Vocalist ‘Forgive The Damages’ Featuring Daudi Matsiko

Manchester, UK instrumental trio GoGo Penguin released their first song with a vocalist, “Forgive The Damages,” featuring British-Ugandan singer-songwriter Daudi Matsiko. The track is set for GoGo Penguin’s forthcoming album, Necessary Fictions, arriving June 20 via XXIM/Sony.

GoGo Penguin — Chris Illingworth (piano, synths), Nick Blacka (bass, synths) and newest member Jon Scott (drums) — heralded their new LP and sonic vision with the single “Fallowfield Loops.”

“This is what we want to make right now, and it feels authentic,” Blacka stated of the trio’s new music.

With the release of “Forgive The Damages,” GoGo Penguin continues exploring new territory as the track is the band’s first with a vocalist. Daudi Matsiko, however, is not new to the GoGo Penguin universe as a longtime tourmate of the band.

Blacka also detailed how the trio came to record their first music with a vocalist:

“We’ve often thought about working with other musicians, particularly vocalists, but it had to feel right and not forced. We’ve been friends with Daudi Matsiko for a long while now and over the years we’ve talked about writing something together. Originally, we weren’t thinking of having vocals on this track. We had the chords and the melodic idea, but we were thinking of using field recordings, samples or perhaps even some spoken word. One weekend around the time we were working on this track Daudi randomly phoned as he’d flown into Manchester from a gig in Slovakia. I went to pick him up from the airport and we sat in my garden and drank some beers. This is when I explained some of the overall concepts behind the album and he went away and wrote some lyrics. He completely understood where we were coming from with this album. Everything clicked into place, it didn’t feel forced, and it definitely felt right. We tweaked a few things together and we asked for a ‘soaring vocal line’ at the end of the track and Daudi recorded the harmonised line that sings ‘forgive the damages’ near the end of the song, which is when we really felt we had something special.”

Watch the in-studio music video for “Forgive The Damages” below:

GoGo Penguin are coming to North America this fall. Scroll down for the band’s full tour routing and ticket info.