1 	The 16 Kingdoms Of The 5 Barbarians 	8:45
2 	Bemsha Swing	6:04
3 	Inhaling Shade 	5:23
4 	One Big Vamp 	5:57
5 	Round Midnight	5:39
6 	Announcement 	0:52
7 	Every Step A Dance, Every Word A Song 	5:22
8 	Stand On Zanzibar 	7:55
9 	Swansong 	6:57

Drums, Percussion [Log Drum], Producer – Bill Bruford
Piano, Keyboards – Michiel Borstlap 

Drummer Bill Bruford has certainly come a long way since his emergence with Yes in the early '70s. While his interest in jazz was evident in the improvisational aspect of his 25-year association with King Crimson, his mathematical sense of precision and disposition towards mind-boggling subdivisions of rhythm often precluded the kind of elasticity required to approach the looser demands of jazz. As early as '83, however, Bruford was experimenting with the intimate conversational nature of the duo on recordings with Swiss pianist Patrick Moraz, a strong precursor of what was to follow with the formation of his Earthworks Mark I group featuring Iain Ballamy and Django Bates. Still, as wildly exploratory as that group was, and as comfortable as Bruford was at creating natural-feeling grooves in challenging meters, it would take a dozen more years and the creation of his all-acoustic Earthworks Mark II group before he would truly reconcile his predilection for challenging compositional form with a looser, more elastic playing style.

Since the release of Earthworks Mark II's début, A Part, and Yet Apart (Summerfold, '99), Bruford's playing style has loosened up to the point where he is now a far more in-the-moment player, responsive to his musical surroundings. So when he met Dutch pianist Michiel Borstlap in '02 and began playing duo shows that were less about the confines of structure and more about what Bruford terms "performance-based" music—music of the moment where spontaneity and interaction were the predominant factors—it seemed as though Bruford had made yet another leap forward. With the release of Every Step a Dance, Every Word a Song , an album of live performances culled from dates performed in Europe during '03 and '04, Bruford's evolution is confirmed.

While Bruford and Borstlap are still more concerned with form than, say, Italian pianist Enrico Pieranunzi—whose recent album with Paul Motian, Doorways , is another beast entirely—the reciprocation between the two jumps out from the first notes of the more structured "The 16 Kingdoms of the 5 Barbarians." Bruford's liner notes allude to the fact that the performance space impacts the nature of the musical dialogue—smaller rooms having "the intimacy of a dinner table conversation between old friends,'? while larger venues "naturally become a bit more muscular and assertive." Still, on more introspective pieces including the title track, the anthem-like "Inhaling Shade," and an abstract, yet faithful reading of Monk's "Round Midnight," Bruford may gently assert the forward motion, but he's also become a masterful colourist. And while Borstlap's supplementing of his piano with electronic keyboards sometimes gives the duo a broader complexion, the subtleties of their exchange are never overshadowed by sheer demonstrativeness.

Every Step a Dance, Every Word a Song may not be as great a step forward for Borstlap, already a well-established jazz figure, but it represents one more advance in the pursuit of a more instinctive and natural approach for Bruford, an artist who has, for all intents and purposes, left his rock roots completely behind him. ---John Kelma, allaboutjazz.com

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1 	Revel Without A Pause 	7:33
2 	Triplicity 	6:22
3 	The Shadow Of A Doubt 	6:07
4 	Teaching Vera To Dance 	8:14
5 	Half Life 	5:18
6 	Come To Dust 	9:56
7 	Cloud Cuckoo Land 	6:05
8 	Never The Same Way Once 	7:22
9 	The Wooden Man Sings, And The Stone Woman Dances 	7:42

Patrick Clahar - Saxophone [Tenor], Saxophone [Soprano]
Steve Hamilton – Piano
Mark Hodgson – Bass
Bill Bruford – Drums

In past incarnations of Bill Bruford's Earthworks, music often centered around the drummer's electronic sound sculptures using digital triggers and chordal drums. The approach yielded fine results, but Bruford up and changed everything when in 1995 he christened a new Earthworks. Ditching the technology in favor of a traditional jazz kit, his music began reaching back to cool, hard bop, and old-school fusion. In addition to now playing his kit in an unorthodox arrangement, Bruford moved the emphasis from nifty electronics to the kinetic energy generated by his impressive polyrhythmic work. On "Triplicity" his orchestration boasts a dizzying array of time changes, the tempo kept constant only by the hi-hat. It's an aural exercise (albeit a very enjoyable one) just keeping pace. On the spicy "Teaching Vera to Dance," the groove is modern funk; on "Cloud Cuckoo Land," a modified murrenge. Saxophonist Patrick Clahar does an excellent job keeping up with Bruford and pianist Steve Hamilton's changes, but his energies would be better used in emphasizing melody than in rhythmic acrobatics, as his sweetly romantic playing on the languid "Come to Dust" only confirms. But for all the obtuse rhythms and expert playing, The Sound of Surprise lacks a certain sense of drama, which previous Earthworks albums (notably All Heaven Broke Loose and even the concert document Live: Stamping Ground) had in spades. Precisely what made the early Earthworks records so interesting were the chordal drums, largely horn-driven songs, and more progressive outlook. Going back to a traditional jazz quartet format feels somehow like a step backward. ---John Duffy, Rovi

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A1 	Beelzebub 	3:16
A2 	Back To The Beginning 	7:09
A3 	Seems Like A Lifetime Ago (Part One) 	2:30
A4 	Seems Like A Lifetime Ago (Part Two) 	4:25
A5 	Sample And Hold 	5:12
B1 	Feels Good To Me 	3:49
B2 	Either End Of August 	5:27
B3 	If You Can't Stand The Heat... 	3:20
B4 	Springtime In Siberia 	2:43
B5 	Adios A La Pasada (Goodbye To The Past) 	7:56

Bill Bruford - drums, percussion
Dave Stewart - keyboards
Allan Holdsworth - guitar
Annette Peacock - vocal
Jeff Berlin - bass
with Kenny Wheeler – flugelhorn

This is the first solo date by drummer Bill Bruford after the first demise of King Crimson. Feels Good to Me goes far beyond the usual prog rock conceits of its time, and enters fully into the compositional structures and improvisational dynamics of jazz. Here he surrounds himself with various mates from the Canterbury scene -- guitarists Allan Holdsworth (Soft Machine and Tony Williams' Lifetime) and John Goodsall (Brand X), bassist Jeff Berlin, keyboardist Dave Stewart, and ECM flügelhorn stalwart Kenny Wheeler. He also enlisted the enigmatic vocal prowess of poet, singer, and songwriter Annette Peacock.

The opener, "Beelzebub," is a furious staccato workout. Holdsworth trades eights with Bruford and Berlin executes loping basslines as Stewart waxes painterly with both organ and synthesizer. It's knotty and stops on a dime before charging into a beautiful solo by Holdsworth and resolving itself with the ensemble restating the theme. "Back to the Beginning" has one of four vocal performances by Peacock. It's a jazz tune -- funky, syncopated, and heavily and wildly lyrical both in groove and meter. It's a song about addictions and, given Peacock's sultry treatment, it's hard to tell if they are chemical, material, or sexual. The band works hard staying behind the singer but can't help but overshadow her.

On the two-part "Seems Like a Lifetime Ago," musical schizophrenia sets in. After a colorful pastoral intro, Peacock glides beautifully through Bruford's lyric of forlorn reverie accompanied by a gorgeous Wheeler solo. Then "Part Two" begins with her growling out the refrain and the band taking off for parts unknown. Hard funky rhythms call Holdsworth's lead guitar to move flat up against Bruford's frenetic drumming. They challenge each other dynamically as the rest of the rhythm section nervously dances around them. Holdsworth finally grabs the lead and plays a solo that is nothing short of breathtaking, giving way to a restatement of the theme and Bruford opening up the harmonic structure before bringing it to a transcendent close two minutes later. The album's six instrumentals are tight: they hold improvisational breaks to the limits of compositional dictation rather than vice versa. The most beautiful, "Either End of August," features Stewart and Wheeler playing unusual yet melodic solos that entwine with each other as the rest of the band struggles to keep the drama out of the music. They don't succeed entirely and the track is all the better for it.

The set closes with "Adios a la Pasada (Goodbye to the Past)," a collaboration between Peacock and Bruford. It's on Peacock's favorite theme: to emerge from love scraped and beaten, yet resolved to keep an open heart. The opening is spare and strange, coated with whispering keyboards and bass haunting the artist's every word. Then Bruford majestically leads the band, soaring into the heart of her lyric, "What it is/Is this/Is what it is/Forgive yourselves/Release yourselves from the past." The music opens up an entirely new sonic dimension, as if history, both musical and emotional, was being rewritten. And it was. Bruford has yet to issue a solo recording as powerful as Feels Good to Me. ---Thom Jurek, Rovi

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1. Thud (4:14) 
2. Making A Song And Dance (5:56) 
3. Up North (5:28) 
4. Pressure (7:26) 
5. My Heart Declares A Holiday (4:40)   play
6. Emotional Shirt (4:48)               play
7. It Needn't End In Tears (5:15) 
8. The Shepherd Is Eternal (1:52) 
9. Bridge Of Inhibition (4:17)

Musicians:
- Bill Bruford - drums, percussion, whirled instruments 
- Iain Ballamy - saxophones 
- Django Bates - keyboards, horn and trumpet 
- Mick Hutton - acoustic bass

After the dissolution of KING CRIMSON (80's edition), Bill BRUFORD recruited sax player Iaian Ballamy, keyboardist, horn and trumpet player Django Bates and acoustic bass player Mick Hutton to form EARTHWORKS - a perfect platform to showcase his true passion: jazz. Apart from BRUFORD, EARTHWORKS's latest incarnation featured Tim Garland on sax, flute and bass clarinet, Steve Hamilton on piano and Mark Hodgson on bass. The band is credited with six studio albums, two live cd's and one compilation disk.

BRUFORD himself considers their first album (the eponymous 1987 "Earthworks") one of the highlights of his career and perhaps rightly so. Even though it is very much a product of the jazz genre, the eclecticism of influences including world music elements, the varied structures and moods of the compositions, and the dynamic musicianship make this as progressive an album as one can get. With "The Sound of Surprise" released in 2001, however, the band seems to have ditched electronic sound sculptures in favour of a more traditional jazz kit; as a result, the music reaches an almost cool, hard-bop and old-school fusion, not unlike what post-boppers were doing before BRUFORD joined YES in 1968. This album, along with the subsequent studio release "The Sound of Surprise" in 2001, isn't exactly cutting edge or innovative but still quite likeable.

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