Strangers in the Night

Brighouse & Rastrick put their reputation on the line with the latest pick 'n mix selection box from Obrasso. Are the Swiss still trying to sell us unlabelled tripe though?

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Brighouse & Rastrick
Conductor: Alan Morrison
Soloists: Michael Howley, Gary McPhee, Stephen Wilkinson, Alex Francis, David Hebb, Martin Gill
Obrasso Recordings: CD929
Total Playing Time: 73.15 

If Obrasso carry on producing CDs like this, even Samson would opt for pulling his own hair out.

’Strangers in the Night’ is yet another ‘never mind the quality feel the width’ release from the Swiss label that makes the contents found on the tripe counter at Lidl stores seem like prime Aberdeen Angus steak. 

Sausage factory output

This is sausage factory output - an exercise in flogging musical meat products to potential customers without the help of labelling and sell by dates. That Obrasso cannot be bothered to give at least some explanation about the 16 eclectic tracks in the CD insert booklet tells you everything you really need to know.

Professional polish

That what should be a risible release has some sort of calorific musical value however is down to the playing of Brighouse & Rastrick and MD Alan Morrison, who perform each of the pieces with an admirable degree of professional polish that is a huge credit to themselves.

What other band would play ‘Tiger Rag’ with such obvious relish and sense of fun (despite the singing accents being more Carry on Cabby than authentic Cab Calloway), or get their lead players to provide such classy performances of the five lightweight solo items?

Delivered in spades

There has been a fair degree of rehearsal time spent on the pieces (some of which may or may not deserve it) and the attention dynamics and the obvious precision of the ensemble work is noticeable on each of them.  Obrasso owe Brighouse and Alan Morrison big time. They have delivered their side of the bargain in spades.

The pieces remain very much a mixed bag though – from the camp theatricals of ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ (which won’t get you head banging like the scene from the ‘Wayne’s World’ film) to the pastiche New Orleans styled ‘Down Bourbon Street’, the musical stereotypes of Mexico (‘La Cucaracha’) and Switzerland (‘Tyrolean Sounds’) to mock Scott Joplin (‘The Easy Winners’) and Victor Young (‘Tea for Two’).

Toblerone

In between we get everything from the theme tune to ‘Film 2008’ (not a patch on the Billy Taylor version) to a couple of whimsical Polkas, a non descript cornet feature, some of mid 1960’s crooning pop and a march from the land of Toblerone and cuckoo clocks that couldn’t have been made more Swiss sounding if it came with a free pack of Gruyère cheese and a small red handled pocket knife. 

Interest

Amid this musical detritus however there are two extended works of interest – Sandy Smith’s classy arrangement of highlights from the stage show ‘Cats’ and Luc Rodenmacher’s ‘Intervals’, which on first hearing may seem to by a concerto for trombone glissandi, but on repeated listening becomes something more substantive.

It’s all a bit hit or miss as you would expect with Obrasso’s insatiable desire to try and produce a cover version of just about every tune under the sun, but it would add greatly to the value of their releases if they invested a bit more of their Swiss francs into the post production process.

This may be a cheerful release but it certainly isn’t cheap, and the sales pitch of flogging a product on the back of a famous name (putting their reputation on the line in the process), hoping that the customer won’t mind the lack of in house quality production is starting to become tiresome. 

Obrasso better start upping their game with these types of releases before we all become bald through exasperation. 

Iwan Fox

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