With festival promoters sizing up the hot prospect of GoGoPenguin returning to the road in 2014 Nick Blacka, the new bassist in GoGo Penguin should make a difference, you would have thought, when the newly configured Penguins (pianist Chris Illingworth, now Blacka, and drummer Rob Turner), are heard on v2.0 to be released by Gondwana Records in early-2014.

It's one of the first significant new jazz releases of 2014.

Blacka, a member of the Magic Hat Ensemble who graduated with a jazz studies degree from Leeds College of Music and whose gigging credits have included appearances with Matthew Halsall, Nitin Sawhney, Dave O’Higgins, and Stuart McCallum, replaces the charismatic Grant Russell who appeared on GoGoPenguin’s 2012 debut Fanfares that put the band firmly on the map with their distinctive New Melodic take on the post-EST European piano trio tradition drawing on influences that include ambient, electronica and Eastern sounds.

GoGo Penguin play the Irish club, Bradford, on 17 January, and then launch v2.0 in Hall Two of Kings Place in London on 15 February with support from the three-piece Mammal Hands.