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The Penguin Cafe Orchestra recorded and performed for 24 years until Jeffes died of a Brain Tumour in 1997 . HISTORY After becoming disillusioned with the rigid structures of classical music and the limitations of rock music, in which he also dabbled, Jeffes became interested in the relative freedom in ethnic music and decided to imbue his work with the same sense of immediacy and spirit. Describing how the idea of the Penguin Cafe Orchestra came to him, Jeffes said: Their first album, '' Music From The Penguin Cafe '', was released in 1976 on Brian Eno 's experimental E.G. Records label; a collection of pieces recorded from 1974-1976, it was followed in 1981 by '' Penguin Cafe Orchestra '', after which the band settled into a more regular release schedule. They played their first major concert in 1977, supporting Kraftwerk at The Roundhouse . They went on to tour the world and play at a variety of music festivals as well as residencies on London's South Bank . FAMOUS PIECES Their most famous piece is "Telephone & Rubber Band", which is based around a tape loop of a telephone ring tone, and was featured in the soundtrack of Nadia Tass ' 1986 Australian film '' Malcolm ''. The tape loop was recorded when Jeffes was making a phone call; he discovered that he was hearing a combination of both the ring tone and engaged signal at the same time. He recorded it on an answering machine. Another famous tune is "Music for a Found Harmonium" which Jeffes wrote on a Harmonium which he found dumped in a back street in Kyoto where he was staying in the summer of 1982 after the first PCO tour to Japan. He wrote that after installing the found harmonium "''in a friend's house in one of the most beautiful parts at the edge of the city''", he "''frequently visited this instrument during the next few months and remember the time fondly as one during which I was under a form of enchantment with the place and the time.''" The piece gained exposure when released on the first Café Del Mar volume in 1994 and has been recorded by many other artists/bands including Patrick Street , Celtic Fiddle Festival , Sharon Shannon , Nollaig Casey , Four Men And A Dog and Kevin Burke ; in 2004, the work was featured in the film Napoleon Dynamite and the following year in the film It's All Gone Pete Tong . TRIVIA Their music has been used in adverts for Eurotunnel , The Independent , Hewlett Packard , Knorr and One2One . DISCOGRAPHY
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