Anyone who purchased the DPRP recommended album The Bruised Romantic Glee Club will be delighted to know that a companion album, Waves Sweep The Sand, has just been released. A collection of 17 songs and instrumentals that are all related to, or were intended for the original album but were, for one reason or another (generally because they didn’t quite seem to fit) omitted from the final running order. A number of pieces were also originally recorded for an uncompleted instrumental album. However, this is not a motley collection of outtakes jumbled together in an attempt to bring in a few extra pennies as each of the tracks is of a very high quality.
Considering that most were left off Glee Club because they affected the flow, the album hangs together very well and seems to have its own internal consistency and natural flow of its own. The majority of the performance is by Jakszyk alone although saxophonist Gary Barnacle and drummers Gavin Harrison and Ian Wallace perform on a track apiece with Harrison also providing drum loops to another.
As with Glee Club, there are too many tracks to deal with each individually, particularly as there is such a wide scope contained within the 17 pieces. A couple of cover versions are included, the first of which is an excellent version of Bread’s London Bridge, the sleeve notes detailing how it came to be included being particularly amusing. Jakszyk has added a new instrumental coda to the song, David Gates In Whitley Bay, the title of which is explained in the notes (for any readers who are not familiar with Bread, David Gates was their leader and principal songwriter).
The other cover is Sir George Martin’s Theme One, a piece of music that used to herald the end of the day’s broadcast on BBC Radio 1. There have been several notable cover versions of this piece over the years by artists such as Cozy Powell and Bigelf, but it is arguably the most famous one (also used by Radio 1 as the theme music to the Friday Rock Show) by Van Der Graaf Generator that Jakszyk uses as the template to his recording. Vocals are only included on two other songs besides London Bridge, which is no reflection of Jakszyk’s fine singing voice.
Upside Down Again was originally going to be included on Glee Club but a catastrophic hard drive failure left the recording in tatters (Jakko, Jakko, were you never taught the importance of backing things up?!). A careful reconstruction from bits of memory and MIDI files and re-recording allows its inclusion here. The other song is Django’s Lullaby written for Jakszyk’s young son and left off Glee Club as it was considered too twee.
The instrumental pieces display how versatile a musician Jakszyk is, not that any confirmation of that is needed when one considers his background, which stretches from the funk-pop of Level 42 to the progressive vibes of The Tangent. As with The Bruised Romantic Glee Club, Waves Sweep The Sand is an immensely listenable CD and a worthy accompaniment to the original album.
As it is a limited edition, at a cheap price to boot, if you want a copy best head over to the Burning Shed Website and get yourself a copy. Whilst there, if you haven’t already got one, pick up one of the newly re-released Glee Club album which is every good as our review stated it was back in 2006. Conclusion: 8 out of 10
MARK HUGHES