EARTHWORKS - Journey through life

4. October 2019

Earthworks Bill Bruford

EARTHWORKS - Lebensreise

There are not many drummers who have shaped rock history as comprehensively as the Englishman Bill Bruford. With his powerful polyrhythmic drumming he made decisive contributions in bands like Yes or King Crimson, he played briefly for Genesis and Gong and was involved in the formation of the supergroup U.K.. In 1979 he founded his own band Bruford and in 1986 Earthworks, with which he was to play for two decades. The work of Earthworks is now being honoured with a major retrospective.

Bill Bruford unites the rock musician with the jazz drummer, without giving preference to either of these two incarnations. His long-time jazz band Earthworks had a similar significance for the British scene as Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers had for the American, because many young musicians who would later come to fame and glory began their careers alongside the drummer. With the spectacular box "Earthworks Complete" the complete works of the band including unreleased material will be summarized on 20 CDs and four DVDs. A good reason to look back with Bill Bruford on his time with Earthworks.

eclipsed: Were Earthworks one band with different line-ups or several bands with the same name?

Bill Bruford: The common denominator that brought everything together was my special way of playing drums and inventing music. It was the same band with different approaches. The first issue [1986-1993] was characterized by the electric/acoustic thing, the second [1997-2001] was purely acoustic, and the last [2002-2005] was somewhere between the two. In the second edition I was looking for a jazz style that was as emotional as the first, but with a purely acoustic background.

eclipsed: How did you start with Earthworks and how did you find the right musicians?

Bruford: After King Crimson had stopped 1984 to the general surprise, I stood again on the road. But this time I had a decade of experience and four jazz-influenced Bruford albums behind me. I had slipped further in the direction of jazz or, if you like, returned to an interactive way of making music where not everyone wants to know exactly what will happen next. If anyone wants to call that jazz, I don't have a problem with that. In addition, the musical ecology had changed. The music scene was in a good mood, was at one of its regular height phases and appeared quite often on German night television. In the UK, a profiled anarchistic big band with many young players called Loose Tubes had an occasional TV slot. Their leader was the pianist and tenor horn player Django Bates, and a key musician was saxophonist Iain Ballamy. At the same time we enjoyed improved electronic instruments and the MIDI digital interface. What could jazz musicians do with it? I invited Django and Iain to find out in a new quartet called Earthworks.

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