My review of Sheer Reckless Abandon, which collects all three CDs and one DVD released by drummer Bill Bruford's largely improvised duo with Dutch pianist Michiel Borstlap, today at All About Jazz.
One of the great joys of music can be that of distance: coming back to a piece of music, a musician/group or a discography, even, years later to rediscover it anew. While returning to music after a break of months, years...even decades...is not always a revelation, it's likely true that, if the music was appealing the first time around, it will be just as compelling—maybe even more so—when a significant amount of time has passed since it was last experienced. The benefit of a fresh set of ears that have grown through exposure to other music in the ensuing years cannot be underestimated or overstated.
With two books under his belt and a new career as a public speaker, having retired from a forty year career as a recording and gigging musician a decade ago, the only way to experience drummer Bill Bruford's musical contributions is now solely through the passage of time. A co-founding member of Yes, Bruford left that progressive rock group on the cusp of its greatest commercial success to begin what would turn out to be a quarter century of on again/off again participation in a number of King Crimson incarnations, some more improvisation-centric than others.
Those two groups may have garnered Bruford his greatest international acclaim, but his career was filled with many other milestones in the service of others. In addition to studio work with the likes of singer/songwriter Roy Harper, guitar experimentalist David Torn, fusion guitarist Al Di Meola and former Yes-mate, bassist Chris Squire (on the bassist's stellar 1975 solo outing for Atlantic Records, Fish Out of Water), Bruford also spent a brief time, when drummer Phil Collins stepped out from behind the kit as Genesis' new lead singer following the departure of Peter Gabriel, as the group's touring drummer, in addition to relatively brief periods with Canterbury group National Health, late '70s supergroup U.K., and the near-Yes reunion band Anderson Bruford Wakeman Howe.
Bruford's best-known work, it seems, has been with projects other than his own.
Still, starting in the late '70s, Bruford began to pursue a number of self-led projects...
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