5 % for Something!!

[new_sum_do_solve_ay]

What happened to all the Bill Bruford threads??

There use to be a lot of album reviews and links pertaining to Bill.

Well obviously it was collecting dust. Any good Bruford material? Post it here.

[new_sum_do_solve_ay]

For newbies and vets alike:

Just a biographical tidbit. I'll get going on this some more in the days to come.

From drummersworld.com
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Having already spent twenty years on the cutting edge of modern rock percussion, Bill Bruford formed Earthworks in 1986, as a deliberate return to his roots in jazz. Availing himself of the brightest young talent on the burgeoning U.K. jazz scene, namely keyboardist and tenor horn player Django Bates, and saxophonist Ian Ballamy, both best known as frontrunners with the anarchic big band Loose Tubes, Bruford encouraged the use of rock technology with jazz sensibility - the hall mark of Earthwork's stylish approach. By letting in air and light, and adding a little wit and wisdom, they produced a particularly British antidote to the increasingly grotesque jazz fusion scene. The first LP for Editions EG, Earthworks, was a testament to their achievement.

It sounds simple, but the band only found its direction through serious live playing. No theoretical studio concoction here. Japan, Europe and the UK were all visited before the release of the first album. Immediately heads turned.

The next five years saw the band consolidate and build on this early success with a second LP for Editions EG, Dig?, released in 1989, and a series of major jazz festival appearances in London, Glasgow, Frankfurt, Stuttgart, Montreal and Chicago amongst others. Earthworks' third album, All Heaven Broke Loose, was recorded in Germany.

"Bruford is able to play with the kind of flexibility and nuance that simply wouldn't work in... Genesis, Yes or King Crimson." (4-stars, Downbeat)

But it is ultimately live where jazz happens. Recorded mostly in America, and partly in England on tour in 1992, the band's fourth CD, Stamping Ground, was indeed, live, one-take, no overdubs, and very real.

Earthworks' progress was temporarily halted in 1994-96, when Bruford returned to active service with King Crimson, whose double-trio, double-drummer incarnation toured the world giving over 120 concerts. In 1997, however, business was resumed with the release of Heavenly Bodies on Virgin; this takes a broad overview of events since 1986, culling eleven tracks from across all four CDs, and adding previously unreleased live material. It is, for the newcomer, the ideal entry point to the ferocious agility with which the mband negotiates the rapids, and for the long standing customer, an excellent "greatest hits" package.

1998 saw the release of Bill's "chamber trio" outing with guitarist/pianist Ralph Towner, and the legendary bassist Eddie Gomez. This revealed an ever-increasing maturity in his writing for small group which he wanted to take further and Earthworks was revitalised as his main touring and writing outlet at the end of that year.

This second edition of the band continues to use the best British talent available, and having effectively jettisoned electronic percussion is now revisiting the broadly acoustic sax-piano-bass-drums line up. The band features Steve Hamilton (keyboards) who trained in the U.S. and has lent his services to Bobby Hutcherson, Freddie Hubbard and Gary Burton amongst others, and Patrick Clahar, the fast rising young London tenor player best known for his work with Incognito. Together with Mark Hodgson (bass), this quartet produced 1999's " A Part, and Yet Apart ", 2001's " The Sound of Surprise", and will have a double live CD from London called " Footloose and Fancy Free", and a DVD from New York entitled " Footloose in NYC ".

[Hugh Shiebler]

http://sidsmith.blogspot.com/2006/09/bruford-rock-goes-to-college.html


Saturday, September 16, 2006
Bruford - Rock Goes To College

Something To Sample And Hold Onto

Voiceprint/Winterfold
25th September 2006

"Sometimes you see old photographs of gathering crowds taken in the early part of the 20th Century in which nearly every single soul is wearing a cap or hat of some sort."

"It’s an age whose time has been overtaken by changing fashions; the hat-wearers and the people who made them now long lost in mutual oblivion."

"You get a similar feeling when the camera pulls back to reveal the audience at Oxford Polytechnic in 1979; the incongruous sight of lots of people crammed together nodding, swaying, cheering and otherwise showing irrefutable signs that they are enjoying the music flowing off-stage by fluent and gifted musicians."

"But surely it was exactly this kind of music in exactly this kind of venue that punk was meant to have done away with?"

"Even allowing for the attraction of a BBC TV unit, and the attendant opportunities to wave a “Hello Mum” placard as an extra incentive for going along, this dvd provides incontrovertible proof that people used to turn out in decent numbers for this fast-moving, complex and often knotty music. Sure it was ‘difficult’ but it was also, relatively speaking, popular enough amongst young people of the day."

"Lest we forgot, it was common even in the late 70s for gigs by jazz-rockers and their associates such as Isotope, Pacific Eardrum, Turning Point, John Steven’s Away, Soft Machine, Hatfield & The North, etc., to be well attended by enthusiastic punters who not only knew the material, but were able to nod their heads in 12/8 whilst jabbing troublesome chord shapes in the direction of their air-Fender Rhodes (with optional mini-moog at the side)."

"In Bruford things generally rocked along and moved so fast that there was little time for folks to worry about whether it was jazz, or rock or somewhere between the two. It simply was what it was. With customary understatement, Bill Bruford notes in the scrapbook accompanying this release that as far as they were concerned, Bruford were just a 'rock group with fancy chords.' "

"The playing from the quartet is astoundingly confident throughout. Aside from their leader’s never less than athletic urgings from behind the kit, the finicky handiwork from Jeff Berlin and Alan Holdsworth’s quicksilver guitar glance and dart aboveDave Stewart’s consistently classy keyboards."

"Vocalist Annette Peacock who appears on two tracks makes an oddly timid addition to the show. During “Back To The Beginning Again” she wanders to the rear of the stage delivering her brand of sprechgesang from behind the drum riser at one point."

"Whether this is due to indifferent on-stage monitoring, disdain for rock show convention or fashionable truculence is unclear, but it has the effect of making her contribution somewhat dispassionate and lack-lustre."

"Transmitted back in the days when television appeared to value music for its own sake rather than as an adjunct to cross-promotion, filler or without it being mediated by the omnipresent Jools Holland, this dvd captures 40 minutes of intelligent, racy tunes whose wit and virtuosity now appears as arcane as all those hat-wearing types way back when."

Get it here:

http://www.billbruford.com/

[Purple Wolfhound]

I recently purchased the first U.K. album on cd (I bought it when it first came out on vinyl, too) and have to say that it is one of the most perfect recordings of progressive rock ever. The In The Dead Of Night suite of songs (In The Dead Of Night / By The Light Of Day / Presto Vivace And Reprise) is a true musical masterpiece and showcases the power and precision of Bill Bruford's drumming. I find it hard to believe that he did not receive any writing credit for this, as the percussion drives a good deal of it, imo.