Bill Bruford's Earthworks - Stamping Ground (Album Visualiser)

I agree with critic Robert Sandall, writing for the Sunday Times (London) and Q Magazine, that Earthworks’ fourth album ‘Stamping Ground’, was our ‘best and most complete album so far’. Recorded on tour in New York City NY, Boston MA and Cambridge UK in 1992, it was the beginning of a long steady transition from studio recordings to live recordings. That’s a whole story in itself, for another day perhaps, but somehow this live recording captured and summed-up much of what we’d been trying to do since the band’s inception. Here’s a question: can you have slippery funk and splurges of electronic drums (Nerve), touches of humour (the three-pitches-only melody of Emotional Shirt), the scent of English northern brass bands (Up North, Old Song from All Heaven Broke Loose) and still be recognisably jazz? From the artist’s perspective, Sandall did what critics do best. He pointed out to his readership how the artist’s work fits into the bigger picture; its relevance (if any); it’s potential to change things. In his view, “Earthworks […] are self-evidently and inquisitively modern. They speak in many tongues; they might jump to the funk then glide lightly into bebop, noodle around some electronic keyboard figure, check out a colliery brass band or launch into free improvisation. They understand that music, like sex, can be exciting, moving and funny – and sometimes all three, within the space of one semi-controlled outburst. Jazz, to them, is not a set of rules and stylistic mannerisms laid down in America between the 20’s and 60’s; it is a permission to create some kind of new order out of that feeling of benign confusion which many of us experience at one time or another, and particularly when we come to make an inventory of our record collections”. We Brits are outrageously free with the notion of jazz as permission. Want to do something unusual in music? You have permission. It’ll be called ‘jazz’ first of all because no one‘s heard it before. My colleagues and I have been at your service, dear reader, for decades, searching hard for the innovative, the unusual, the unlikely – the stuff that won’t fly, until it does. All this was written into the DNA of Earthworks’ music. ‘Stamping Ground’ was our best and most complete album so far. This visualiser of ‘Stamping Ground’ premieres on Friday 23rd October 2026 at our usual 3.00 pm UK time. We respond to encouragement, so if you like what we’re doing please do subscribe to our Channel. With thanks to the late Robert Sandall – his words quoted above can be read in their entirety in the album liner notes. ‘Stamping Ground’ is available from the shop at www.billbruford.com. 00:00:00 Nerve 00:06:06 Up North 00:11:28 A Stone's Throw 00:19:46 Pilgrim's Way 00:28:32 Emotional Shirt 00:34:37 It Needn't End In Tears 00:42:39 All Heaven Broke Loose 00:50:34 Candles Still Flicker in Romania's Dark 00:57:17 Bridge Of Inhibition #jazzmusic #jazz #drumming #drummer #improvisation #tamadrumsofficial #paistecymbals