Duncan Parsons - On Earth, As It Is.
Duncan Parsons
On Earth, As It Is
(Rough Draft Audio)
By Paul Davies
The commonality of drummer jokes really should stop here. Think Bill Bruford, Neil Peart, Simon Phillips, Mike Portnoy, Nick D’Virgilio… and Duncan Parsons. Multi-Instrumentalist Parsons has brought together a startling group of top-grade musicians to expose their, and his, skill set on a mind-blowing nine tracks of progressive jazz fusion. Current drummer with the John Hackett Band, Parsons also gets up from behind the kit to dabble on instruments and gabble vocals on this sixth solo release that's a personal and spiritual concept recording inspired by The Lord's Prayer, no less.
This album's undoubted progressive credentials are revealed by a supreme cast list of some of this genre's leading musicians. Parsons' bulging contacts book means that he has roped in John Hackett, Nick Fletcher, John Helliwell, Dave Bainbridge, John Steel and Lizz Lipscombe. Legendary bass player Leland Sklar, no doubt complete with an Old Testament beard, also contributes his hefty bottom line to This Day and Lead Us Not. Parsons proclaims to have taken musical inspiration from Floyd's The Dark Side Of The Moon, Yes' Fragile and Tull's Aqualung but the whole of this album is more than the collected sum of these influences’ parts. The profound opener, Heaven, is an existential epic rumination beyond the imaginings of the great gigs in the sky. With Kim Eames' angelic presence and Helliwell's sax play, Hackett's flute, Lipscombe's violin & viola, Lifesign's Dave Bainbridge's steel guitar and immaculate fusion guitar from Nick Fletcher, Parsons has thrown a golden kitchen sink brim-full with exquisite music, and performances, at this opening masterpiece that sticks and constantly evolves in the mind. He does as much for the rest of these other eight tracks.
The freeform experimentation on This Day, the skittering marriage of piano and violins on Fissures Of Men and Parsons' smart lyrics on The Finish Line constantly engage. Furthermore, Parsons' nylon guitar playing on Unnecessary Kindness entirely backs up the first sentence of this review, in the least. Three Sixteen at times evokes mid-70s National Health - the band - with healing pastoral detours and complex musical interplay. Ditto Lead Us Not which, following Fissures Of Men (Reprise), arrives at the final and bookending epic track Valediction (Power And Glory) which in Parsons' words involves the GForce Isolation and a Mellotron Choir. That says it all, really. Head full of brilliant music, heart in the right place, all passionately put down on a remarkable recording on which Parsons practices what he preaches.
