A Sequence of Mistakes:
From SJS, the Prog band that never sleeps!

(Top) Richard Naisbett
(Centre) Kirsty Forster
(Bottom L-R) Graeme James, Stuart Stawman, Doug Skene, Christopher Soulos

With band members in England and Australia, SJS is the genre-blending, neo-progressive rock band that never sleeps! Their third album release, ‘A Sequence of Mistakes’, finds them confident and ambitious, extending their musical and sonic reach further still.

Strong melodic threads run through a series of explorations at the leading edge of the contemporary progressive landscape. Textures from folk, jazz and mangled electronica are incorporated as effortlessly as Arabic-tinged strings and trippy a capella. Like the musicianship that underlies it, the sonic breadth of the journey is fresh, bold, and accomplished.

Stuart Stawman continues to find new ways to harness the power of his voice, from roaring force to fragile intimacy. But not content with that, this album introduces us to the extraordinary vocal talents of first-time collaborator Kirsty Forster. Forster’s perfect delivery lifts opening track ‘Tear Gas’ to a whole new level for SJS, and a soaring piano solo from new band member Richard Naisbett seals the deal. Founding members Christopher Soulos, Graeme James, Doug Skene, and Stuart Stawman continue to shine throughout, providing the slick, musical bedrock now familiar from previous releases.

But perhaps the true spirit and soul of SJS is revealed through the lyrics, words that capture astute observations on the human condition; relationships that sour, the search for freedom, and the burning need to transform suffering. Lyrically, this album offers something of a Schrodinger’s Cat dilemma - it might be a concept album and it might not. It has been left for the listener to ‘open the box’ and see what they discover, whether that be insightful sound bites or a grand narrative arc.

Frontman Stawman, an English musician, songwriter, and producer living in Australia, learnt his craft in the 1980s working in the sound studios of London where he enjoyed encounters with the likes of Talk Talk, David Gilmore, Tears for Fears, and many more. Bringing all that he absorbed in that rich world and combining it with the depth of musicianship to be found in those that he has been fortunate to gather around him, this is the strongest album from SJS yet. The only real mistake would be to miss out on the journey.

Read interview with Stawman here

In what is becoming something of a tradition, I recently spoke to Stuart Stawman about the upcoming release of the third SJS album, ‘A Sequence of Mistakes’. We had last spoken just prior to the release of ‘The Unlikely Event’ in 2021, having done the same for their first release in 2017, ‘The World Without’. Here is our most recent conversation.
Stanley Sumar-Watt
July 2024

So, ‘A Sequence of Mistakes’ . . .

Yes, and you know, it comes off the back of a quote that I’ve always attributed to Brian Eno, which it turns out was incorrect. I‘ve just found out that he didn’t say it at all, it was a guy called Jorma Kaukonen who apparently said, “If you make the same mistake three times, that becomes ‘your arrangement’”. And what’s odd about that is that it’s almost as if he was finishing off a different quote from Frank Zappa who said, “Anything played wrong twice in a row is the beginning of an arrangement.” But I don’t know who said what first.

It does sound like the kind of thing Eno might say.

Exactly, and Eno was in the same kind of neighbourhood when he actually said, “Honour your mistake as a hidden intention”.

We’re talking about creative mistakes?

The world of creativity is riddled with so many things that could be called mistakes or accidents, and many of them literally are, but once they become ‘chosen’ they become the seeds of something new. In that recent Paul Simon documentary [In Restless Dreams: The Music of Paul Simon] there’s a section on how the engineer or producer was working on the sound of the drums for ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’ and a mistake he made resulted in a crazy, cavernous sound. Rather than correct himself and get the sound he had been aiming for, he realised he was on to something and played it to Paul Simon. Now that sound is baked into rock & roll history. To listen to it now, it couldn’t be any other way, you’d have to think they wanted it like that. And they did want it like that, they just hadn’t realised it until their happy mistake. It’s actually a similar story to the 80’s drum sound discovered by Peter Gabriel and his crew. They used the talkback mic system to speak to Phil Collins whilst he was playing his drums in the stone room at Townhouse Studios. The accidental cacophony created by the talkback mic became the drum sound of a decade!

Are you influenced by those kinds of sounds?

Good call, yes. I’m a child of the 80’s in the sense of that being the decade that I was learning to engineer in London. So, every now and then you can find me still marching to the drum sound of the 80’s. Take, for example, those canon-shot snares that are not as common nowadays. On a track like ‘Pulling Saturn’ it just seems the obvious way to go. Obvious for me, anyway!

‘Pulling Saturn’ being the powerful instrumental that marks the halfway point of the new album. Well, I’m saying instrumental but there’s a spoken part at the front, and then your voice actually becomes the central feature of what follows, but you’re not singing lyrics. That is your voice, right?

Yes, that is me. Man, I wish I could do it again! I was in the car listening to an early demo of that track and heard a melody line in my head. I went to sing the line and that sound came out of me. Thankfully, I was nearly home so I quickly set up a mic and recorded those vocal sounds in the space of about 10-15 minutes. I have not been able to sing like that since and I don’t really know where it came from. It wasn’t a mistake so much as a visitation. Doug asked me recently if I could do something like that on one of his tracks and I had to say no.

It's great that you were able to capture it.

Totally. Every now and then I’ll mess around and see if I can find the place in my throat where that came from but I never have. The last time I tried I ended up sounding more like a trumpet! I captured that too, that’s one for the next album. But I have to focus on getting this one finished first.

But you’re almost there?

Yeah, about half of it is mixed and mastered now. Just the rest to go. One last overdub, some bass from Chris for ‘Pulling Saturn’, and then that will be all the recording finished. Nearly there.

Are you happy with it?

Seriously happy. I love what everyone has brought to this album. Christopher turned in a cracking overdub on upright bass just last night. It’s such a great sound. Graeme and Doug keep delivering the magic and then there’s ‘the newcomers’, Richard and Kirsty that have brought wonderful piano parts and Kirsty’s gorgeous voice. I’m very happy.

You were telling me that Richard and Kirsty both live in England?

Yeah, well there’s a story there. I got back in touch with my extended family a couple of years back, having had no contact with them for decades. Within a very short space of time I ended up exchanging texts and emails with all of my cousins. All except one that is, this guy called Richard. I’d barely known him when I was young and I didn’t really know how to start up a conversation. Then one day his sister happened to mention that Richard’s wife was doing her PhD on Kate Bush. That caught my interest! Anyway, long-story-short, it turns out that Richard is a professional keyboard player. When we started trading names of our musical interests we found that we had loads in common; Peter Gabriel, Yes, King Crimson and heaps more. I mean, there was so much overlap between us that it had me speculating the existence of a prog gene in our shared DNA.

So you invited him to join the band?

Well, I took a punt really. I asked him if he’d be up for trying some piano on the opening track, ‘Tear Gas’. It felt risky because I didn’t know how I would handle it if he sent me something that wasn’t a good fit for SJS. Maybe we wouldn’t talk again for another few decades! Happily, we didn’t get tested that way. But it wasn’t a fit that ‘blended in’ so much as something that pushed the envelope of what SJS can be. The first thing he recorded was an amazing piano solo on the end of ‘Tear Gas’ which wasn’t something I’d been planning at all, but it turned out brilliantly. He plays on three tracks all up, and there’ll be plenty more down the road.

And ‘Tear Gas’ is the same song that Kirsty sings on.

Exactly. Richard works with Kirsty in the UK as part of the Kirsty Forster Project. Well, let’s go back a step. The song ‘Tear gas’ had a kind of call-and-response section towards the end, and in my head it was a conversation between the protagonists, a man and a woman. But at that stage there was only me doing vocals. Then it occurred to me, ‘the woman that Richard works with, what if . . ?’ She was clearly a great singer but I had no way of knowing if she would have any interest in singing on my music. Well she agreed and she totally delivered, she’s done a brilliant job. The third verse, which comes before the call-and-response thing, was planned as a duet with both of us, but when she sent her vocals across I listened to them and thought, “no, delete my parts and give it over to her, she’s got this nailed!” I do a couple of low harmonies in the background, but the stage has to be well-and-truly hers for that section. So, yeah, what the two of them have brought to the party is just fantastic and completely unforeseen. I was in the UK very briefly last year so we got to meet up then, which was great. And then more recently, Kirsty has done some backing vocals for the final track of the album, ‘Blue Sky Born’.

You can’t stop grinning!

I can’t! I just love what the collective has brought to this project. Suffice it to say, I think this is the best thing SJS has done. I know that people generally say that coming out of new projects, but I’m pretty damn sure this is the best album we’ve turned in. Christopher and Graeme have said the same.

I think you’re all correct, for what it’s worth. And you’re right that it does seem to be a common feeling among artists about their latest project, but I think on this occasion you are right.

Thanks. I mean, there do come times in people’s careers where, when you stop and think about it, they stopped saying “I think this one’s our best”. I always worry if that will be how I’ll feel about the next album. But not this one!

I almost get the sense that this album tells a story, that there are threads connecting the songs. For example, what is described as ‘pulling Saturn’ in one song morphs into ‘tearing a hole in the sky’ in another song. And you just mentioned there being two protagonists.

You’re kind of right, though I think the album stands perfectly well without having to work out any overarching storyline. It’s there if you want it. From one perspective, the album is actually laid out a bit like a movie, the final track provides an ending to the first track and then the five tracks in between are something like flashbacks. There is a relationship that fails and a woman who is able to extricate herself successfully and move on to something special, a reawakening of life.

Born into a new sky?

If you like. There’s always latitude to find your own way through the songs and tell me it’s a very different movie to the one I was thinking of! It’s not all tied down.

On the music side of things, this is another tour de force, but the sum of the parts seems to have gone up another level with the addition of Richard and Kirsty. It’s not unlike when Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks joined Fleetwood Mac.

That’s one hell of an analogy! I’m not sure what to make of that, but I do agree that we have taken it up a notch. Graeme on drums and Christopher on bass have turned in amazing performances, locking down the rhythm section. And one feature of this album is that it presented opportunities for letting Christopher take a few moments centre stage, which he does on both fretless and upright bass. Then there’s amazing solo work from Doug on guitar and Richard, ‘the new guy’, weaves in a whole new dimension on piano. We’re not showboating solos, but when solos arrive they are powerful moments. And of course, as we’ve already said, the icing on the cake has been having Kirsty sing on two of the songs.

So you’ve got musicians living in England and Australia?

That’s right, we are the band that never sleeps!

Well, yes, but I was also thinking about how that mirrors your life.

Fair. This year has been the tipping point for me, I’ve now lived exactly half my life in each of the two countries so, yes, that’s actually very true. But credit where credit is due, Greece was responsible for giving us the mighty bass chops of Mr Soulos, so we’re not a pure blend of Aussies and Poms.

He doesn’t live in Greece though?

No, he lives just down the road. You can take the Soulos out of Greece but . . etc. etc.

So parked in different hemispheres, the members of the band haven’t all met?

No. We managed to set up a meeting of the Aussie contingent (Doug, Chris, Graeme and me), but now with the introduction of Richard and Kirsty who both live in the North of England, I’d say the odds of us all gathering in one place are pretty slim. An unlikely event! But through the magic of technology, I hope to keep bringing these folks together in the form of music for years to come.

It sounds like there’s more ahead which is good news, but for now we must herald in the arrival of ‘A Sequence of Mistakes’. I think you are right, I think this is the best outing from SJS yet, standing on the shoulders of the two albums that came before it. Congratulations!

Thanks Stan.

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