BEREFT OF A BLISSFUL UNION

This album is the music developed for a ballet or choreographed modern dance, written for the most part by leader Vermeersch but recorded with the help of British String Smith Quartet. Again, if you know this crazy Sally, you will know you are in for a gigantic roller-coaster ride, and in this case I believe the live shows must've been worth the price of the entrance to the hall, since it appears that part of the dancing happened under water and without breathing apparatus.

The album is book-ended by two classical pieces (the closing one being particularly interesting), but clearly the show's centrepiece is the 24 min Brungle, that comes complete with complete madness, a superb horn arrangements, exciting strings and wild drumming: stupendous. The other major track is the 10 min+ Birdcage starting out as a wild but controlled modern classical music. Another climax is the only sung track Out Of The Pit. Der doppelganger is a rearrangement of a Schubert piece.

This album is the last one to have come out under the X-L S name, but this is a fantastic exit for an extraordinary group. Very worthy and yet another superb chamber prog album.

If Fired was an album marked by a Frank Zappa stamp, Bereft of a Blissful Union could be one testifying of the musical depth and ambition of the band. Conceived for choreography and worked in collaboration with The British Smith string quartet, it clearly shows that there is no musical place where Sally can't cross its legs; contemporary classical (many tracks knit on measure for the Smith Quartet, deploying all their ability, a piece written by Schubert), jazz in various forms (here, the 24 minutes long track two is a killer; several stylistic bits are taken out of their time context and mixed together, like for example dixieland clarinets wailing on top of syncopated jazz-rock rhythmic lines, half tribal drumming giving place to 19th century classical dance hall music, cabaret jazz meets free, Latin percussions dance with strings, sampled New Orleans banjo pave the way to a howling sax in an orgy of rhythms, Broadway against Afro, etc... a true and genial melting pot!), music for thrillers (appearing quickly somewhere like a survolted ghost) and more yet! Changes happen at lightning speed and your brain comes to stock tons of brief information, until some classical pieces are brought in as release to the tensions. Nothing's left to hazard, everything is tightly conceived and programmed, despites the feeling of chaos and panic. Vermeersch in a nutshell!