Footloose & Fancy Free [Import]

Bill Bruford | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (March 12, 2002)
• Number of Discs: 2
• Format: Import
• Label: Discipline Gm UK
• ASIN: B00005YUBU
• Also Available in: Audio CD
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #191,639 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Track Listings

Disc: 1

1. Footloose And Fancy Free

2. If Summer Had Its Ghosts

3. A Part, And Yet Apart

4. Triplicity

5. Come To Dust

6. No Truce With The Furies

7. The Wooden Man Sings, And The Stone Woman Dances

Disc: 2

1. Revel Without A Pause

2. Never The Same Way Once

3. Original Sin

4. Cloud Cuckoo Land

5. Dewey-Eyed, Then Dancing

6. The Emperor's New Clothes

7. Bridge Of Inhibition

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Finest Bruford, August 18, 2002

By 

A. Davis "astandavis" (Greenville, SC) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Footloose & Fancy Free (Audio CD)

I have to agree with the reviewer below. Downbeat magazine rarely hands out "five-star" reviews. This one certainly deserves it. Bill Bruford has been sharpening his Earthworks saw for a long time and "FootLoose & Fancy Free" is the essence of all the previous recordings. This music actually swings. I am so impressed with the way the compositions come together. From a high energy fusion approch to a quiet gentle ballad to full out swinging. This music is filled with great improvisations and group chemistry. The solos are first rate, especially the pianist who reminds me of a young Keith Jarratt. Bruford comes across as a very intelligent drummer with a great ear for talent. His approach reminds me of Art Blakely - taking young talent and stretching their capability around fabulous music. This CD will stay in my changer for a long time. Great job Earthworks. My ears are perking.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars a masterpiece!, August 10, 2002

By A Customer

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Footloose & Fancy Free (Audio CD)

This two CD set is absolutely astounding. Downbeat magazine gave this set 5 stars... an honor they bestow on only a few recordings out of the hundreds they review each year. There is a reason... this recording is an absolute masterpiece. This live set is performed on saxophone, piano, and acoustic bass, and of course includes Bruford's exceptional drumming. The compositions by Bruford further the case that he is a fantastic musician as well as drummer. Pick this up... anyone who like acoustic jazz will not be disappointed.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Earthworks impress yet again, June 17, 2002

By 

Simon Barrow (Exeter, United Kingdom) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Footloose & Fancy Free (Audio CD)

Deploying a set mostly culled from the band's two most recent albums, 'The Sound Of Surprise' and 'A Part and Yet Apart', this live workout from Bruford's Earthworks catches them in fine fettle at London's Pizza Express. (There is a matching DVD from a New York concert on the same tour with a substantially similar selection of material, a Bruford interview and discogragaphy.)

Additional pieces here include 'If Summer Had Its Ghosts', the title track from the album of the same name with Eddie Gomez and Ralph Towner, and 'Original Sin' from the Bruford-Levin Upper Extremities project. The ever-popular 'Bridge of Inhibition' (from the first Earthworks outing way back in 1987) is also included as an encore.

I was fortunate enough to attend the concerts from which this was recorded. It doesn't quite capture the energy of the front row, of course. But 'Footloose And Fancy Free' is, as you would expect, a high quality recording and a fitting rendition of the band that could almost give 'fusion' a good name. On this occasion we are spared between-music patter, which means that we do not have to endure the leader's constant (unnecessary) apologies for past incursions in Yes and King Crimson. His jazz credentials are testified eloquently by the music, so why he needs to dig up old turf is a mystery. It's as if he doesn't quite believe how far he's come himself.

If you haven't heard them lately, Earthworks as a unit have also moved well away from their earlier experimentations around Bruford's electronic chordal drum set, opting instead for a more orthodox acoustic quartet. Or perhaps that should be heterodox, for the quirky spirit of Django Bates and Iain Ballamy lives on in their absence. This latest line-up is angular, joyfully melodic in a non-obvious way, polyrhythmic, and deliberately transgressive of received musical categories.

Steve Hamilton on piano and Mark Hodgson on bass (brought in after an earlier dalliance with Geoff Gascoyne) pass muster as much by their ability to listen to and re-absorb musical ideas as by their prodigious playing talents.

Patrick Clahar on sax, who features on this album, has now been replaced by Tim Garland, courtesy of Chick Corea and a thundering reputation on the burgeoning London jazz scene. He will bring added compositional depth and material to an already powerful line-up.

Bruford's own ever-maturing writing credits make him infinitely more than a drummer and percussionist, as he is eager for us to realise. And, yes, in spite of my comment on his over-concern about those rock roots, he *is* right. Forget 'prog': buy this.