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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Earthworks impress yet again, June 17, 2002
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 Patrick Clahar on sax, who features on this album, has now been replaced by Tim Garland, courtesy of Chick Corea and a thundering reputation on the burgeoning London jazz scene.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.
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