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Perfect Stranger now - new video!

Here is some video from Day 2 of our recording session at AIR Studios in October 2023. A team from Drift Studio in London joined us for the day while we recorded all four parts of Life & Times.

The full-length videos of part 1, Formative Years, and part 4, "It's weird being the same age as old people" are first.

Below them is a clip (a minute or so) from Part 2, Ankle Deep in Dust, starting with the last of several noisy outbursts in an otherwise slow and sleepy jazz waltz. This leads into the main statement of the tune.

This is followed by a similar length clip from Part 3, Midlife Crisis. Starting with the end of Adam Bishop's alto solo, we get the sudden change from 3 / 4 (ish) to the quasi Latin/funk 4 / 4 featuring Alcyona Mick's clavinet intro, followed by Eddy White's guitar solo, then Alcyona again on electric piano and Eddy again. Finally we just catch the start of Tom Green's trombone solo.

 

Perfect Stranger in 1974!

This is the very rough recording we managed to cobble together before disbanding in 1974. It’s the first movement of Life & Times from a rehearsal, edited together from numerous takes and with numerous mistakes, omissions, etc., but still giving some idea of the music.

Featuring Chris Biscoe & Mark Hutchings (saxes), Dick Pearce (trumpet, flugel), Paul Nieman (trombone), Pete Jacobsen (keys), Clifton Prior (percussion), Chris Sansom (guitar and bandleader), Andy Crawford (bass), Paul Cartwright (drums).

Perfect Stranger in 2021

Now we're at the beginning of the revival, with a mini-documentary shot by Jonas Golland (Perfect Stranger's present drummer) and John Murphy at a rehearsal at the Vortex Jazz Club, and in Chris Sansom's garden talking about the project. There are four sections: A taster for Life & Times; The History; The Music; The Players.

Featuring Adam Bishop and Mick Foster (saxes), Shanti Jayasinha (trumpet, flugel), Tom Green (trombone), Alcyona Mick (keys), Rob Millett (percussion), Eddy White (guitar), Paul Michael (bass), Gary Willcox (then on drums), Chris Sansom (conductor, part-time fretless bass, interview subject).

...and in 2022

A couple of snippets from Perfect Stranger's performance of Ludwig's Van at Karamel in the EFG London Jazz Festival in November 2022, with the same line-up as above except for Jonas Golland on drums: