Unfinished Business by Perfect Stranger is an album that winningly combines music that is challenging and thought provoking, with a joyous and accessible musical experience for the listener.
Release date: Available now.
Label: Spark! In association with ECN Music.
Format: CD / Digital.
A FIFTY-YEAR ODYSSEY
The music on the album Unfinished Business had lay dormant for fifty years and has finally been realised on this magnificent recording. Perfect Stranger, the ten-piece line up assembled to give expression to this complex yet very accessible music, have admirably risen to the challenge.
Composer and bassist Chris Sansom first imagined the Perfect Stranger in the early 1970s, bringing together a group of talented musicians to play a set of complex compositions, that brought together jazz and jazz fusion, within musical structures which draw on the classical music world. The album sleeve notes describe that the challenging time signatures inherent in the compositions, and the difficulties of gathering together a large number of musicians, led to the project eventually stalling.
Luckily for us, Chris Sansom was inspired to revive and bring back to life the music he had written back then, forming a new group of musicians to play it. While as is made clear in the sleeve notes, the band’s name Perfect Stranger is not in any way associated with the 1984 album, The Perfect Stranger, which features the music of Frank Zappa. There is nevertheless a resonance in the story of this music, with the challenges encountered by Frank Zappa in realising his musical vision and ambition.
The album itself is organised as three major pieces of work, with Life & Times (of a Perfect Stranger) and Ludwig’s Van, being extended pieces. We will take a look at each in turn.
LIFE & TIMES (OF A PERFECT STRANGER)
This is a four-part suite, clocking in at over thirty-two minutes of playing time. In the sleeve notes, Chris Sansom notes that it was the first piece of music written for the original Perfect Stranger ensemble in 1974. Going on to describe it as “…a work in four movements, loosely based on the conventional structure of a classical symphony”.
Part 1: Formative Years
This is the lengthiest movement and begins with a gentle meandering pastoral introduction, which breaks down, as Jonas Golland (drums) and Paul Michael (bass guitar) introduce a deep funk rhythm. This leads into the main thematic discourse, and a series of short punctuating solo accents across a number of the instruments. The musical section that follows, weaves together quite beautifully a series of short solos as the pace drops. Particularly striking is Shanti Jayasinha’s flugelhorn solo, with its unhurried and gliding tonality, and Adam Bishop’s rhapsodic soprano saxophone solo phrases.
Then with absolute precision the ensemble switches into a frenetic percussive driven section, featuring Alcyona Mick’s sparkling electric piano runs, followed by Tom Green’s pacy trombone solo, which elegantly intertwines around Eddy White’s soulful guitar rhythms.
We then move back into the intro and a recapitulation of the main theme, where the band collectively hit an irresistible groove, and become very playful in subtly varying the elements that make up the main theme. The final coda features a further restatement, that adds in Mick Foster’s flowing flute work, and Rob Millett’s intricate percussive work, alongside another ebullient piano solo from Alcyona Mick.
The time signature changes across this movement are demanding but the musicians carry it off effortlessly. At the same time the composition and arrangement have a great accessibility with the injections of soul and funk. It is a triumphant fusion that works on every level, and this review has gone into detail on this particular movement, to best illustrate why you might wish to seek out this release and the musical rewards it offers.
Parts 2 to 4
‘Part 2: Ankle Deep in Dust’, is described in the sleeve notes as ”..mostly a gentle jazz waltz, with a few noisy outbursts”. An apt description of this more gently paced misty movement, that showcases some very poetic and lyrical solos, featuring the flugelhorn, piano and bass clarinet. The boisterous crescendos offer a contrast that is in no way jarring, a testament to Chris Sansom’s compositional and arranging skills.
‘Part 3: Midlife Crisis’, segues almost imperceptibly out of the preceding movement, but with a fast and energetic rhythmic attack. Musically, we move here into a joyous combination of big band and jazz fusion, with a mightily impressive midpoint musical duel between Eddy White’s guitar and Alcyona Mick’s electric piano.
‘Part 4: It’s weird being the same age as old people’, is a movement that contains rapid switches of tempo and flow, alongside a succession of rapid-fire solos. Standing out is Jonas Golland’s slightly extended drum solo, where he flies around the kit, creating a perfect symbiosis of drum and cymbal work.
LUGUBRIOUS BOOTS
Lugubrious Boots is the second major piece on the album, and has a slow and moody feel, which showcases Paul Michael’s stunning bass playing, supported by Chris Sansom’s fretless bass guitar. With its slow building repeated musical phases and deep resonating bass guitar work, the whole effect is to create a form of hypnotic ambient music, interrupted by a faster, though short, dissonant bridge.
LUDWIG’S VAN
The album concludes with the twenty-two minutes plus of Ludwig’s Van, which the sleeve notes reference as based on Beethoven’s the Grosse Fuge, Op.133. It is an expansive suite of music that travels through many musical styles and mood sequences. Particularly distinctive is the funk driven soloing that commences four minutes in. Eddy White’s guitar solo has some sweeping angular phrases that flow beautifully into Alcyona Mick’s dynamic and very rhythmic electric piano interjections. Rob Millett’s following vibraphone sequence creates a bewitching ambiance that really draws you into the piece. It leads the music into a breakdown from the funk led tempo, and into a wistful floating ensemble section that conjures up an impressionistic landscape of linked sounds.
A linking ascending brass led sequence then heads us back into funk territory before we hit quite marvellously a full-on bebop charge. Then it’s another left turn, leaning into an inspired reggae shuffle, led by the brass instruments. Here there is a resonance of Frank Zappa’s thrilling gift for leading his musicians through radical changes of musical style within a composition.
Further shifting the musical locus is a blues-based boogie that develops an irrepressible swing, as all the instruments weave short melodic solos through the swing-based rhythms. The final coda brings a number of start and stop breakdowns and crescendos, bringing this multilayered piece to a suitably dramatic conclusion.
A WONDERFUL LISTENING EXPERIENCE
Unfinished Business is an immensely rewarding listening experience. It is a work with many musical layers and references, beautifully arranged, and played with both commitment and passion. The engineering of jazz and jazz fusion within a classical music structure, while adding in other musical references, is of course very ambitious and requires quite serious listening. Ultimately though, it completely succeeds in producing something unique and very compelling, that is a truly wonderful listen.
At the heart of this great recording is a musical vision, that winningly combines music that is challenging and thought provoking, with a joyous and accessible musical experience for the listener. In a mini documentary about the development of the album, the first part of the documentary in its title asks, “Is it Fusion? Is it Prog? Is it Third Stream? Jazz? Rock?”. For this reviewer, this is quite simply truly progressive music and is a recommended listen.
You can view here the official video of Perfect Stranger recording Formative Years, Part 1 of Life & Times (of a Perfect Stranger) at AIR Studios, in October 2023:
For more information about Perfect Stranger and Chris Sansom: Perfect Stranger / Perfect Stranger Facebook / Chris Sansom
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