Uploaded June 2026 | Updated September 2026, 2 hours ago
If you’re new around here, a very warm welcome! I'm Bill Bruford. I ran a band called Earthworks for about 20 years. Our latest upload to my YouTube channel is a visualiser of the group’s third studio album, 'All Heaven Broke Loose', recorded in Germany in 1991, to the sound of ‘shock and awe’. Remember that? All hell broke loose, so we turned that idea on its head for the title. The sessions and mixing lasted about 100 hours, almost exactly the same length of time it took Coalition Forces to liberate Kuwait from an Iraqi invasion.
My old friend, guitarist and producer David Torn, was twiddling the knobs as producer. We’d spent a fair bit of time together during his albums ‘Cloud About Mercury’ and ‘Door X’, during which we’d come to understand and like each other and our respective musical choices.
As usual ‘All About Jazz’ had it right: “Bruford moves so effortlessly between his electronic drum system - which allows him to trigger keyboard samples, freeing up Bates to play his Eb Peck horn and trumpet - and his acoustic kit, that it's often only the very presence of Bates on a horn that indicates it's Bruford creating the chordal backdrop”. That was the plan, but it was often a bit more lumpy than that.
Perhaps my favourite piece on the album was ‘Candles Still Flicker In Romania's Dark’, written by the tenor horn player and keyboardist Django Bates. It was inspired by the harrowing TV pictures of the Romanian orphanages discovered after the fall of the Romanian dictator Ceaușescu, executed by firing squad on Christmas Day, 1989. As the Guardian newspaper put it: “They were the pictures that, for many across the world, were the defining image of the aftermath of Romania’s 1989 revolution: emaciated children clothed in rags, looking into the camera with desperate eyes amid the squalid decay of the country’s orphanages”. Still, the candles still flicker: there is hope even in a world as stratospherically cruel as the one we shared with Ceaușescu.
Being still behind a drumset and letting the music do the talking is not as easy as you’d think. The late 1980s were the early days of the drummer being able to trigger harmony and melody, so I get the opening chords, sounded by my Yamaha DX 21. (There didn’t seem to be a module, so I had to cart the whole keyboard around with me as part of my drum kit). I love the arrangement; particularly the sparse unison tenor and bass backing for Django’s piano solo. These boys were, and remain, serious players.
The whole album has a dark side / light side tension. On the darker edge, the music references the Iraqi-Kuwait war, Ceaușescu’s Romanian horrors and the nervous twitching of 'Nerve'. On the brighter side, we ‘splash out’, and we fool around in Pigalle, Paris’ red-light district. In that respect, it’s probably the most international, and socially aware, recording Earthworks ever made. Many years of touring can be enlightening for those who wish to be enlightened. I hope you enjoy it!
#jazz #yes #musicimprovisation #drummer #billbrufordsearthworks #electronicdrums #kingcrimson #peterothtrio
00:00 Hotel Splendour
04:42 Forget-Me-Not
13:07 Candles Still Flicker in Romania's Dark
17:42 Pigalle
24:15 Temple Of Winds
29:17 Nerve
35:25 Splashing Out
40:50 All Heaven Broke Loose
If you’re new around here, a very warm welcome! I'm Bill Bruford. I ran a band called Earthworks for about 20 years. Our latest upload to my YouTube channel is a visualiser of the group’s third studio album, 'All Heaven Broke Loose', recorded in Germany in 1991, to the sound of ‘shock and awe’. Remember that? All hell broke loose, so we turned that idea on its head for the title. The sessions and mixing lasted about 100 hours, almost exactly the same length of time it took Coalition Forces to liberate Kuwait from an Iraqi invasion.
My old friend, guitarist and producer David Torn, was twiddling the knobs as producer. We’d spent a fair bit of time together during his albums ‘Cloud About Mercury’ and ‘Door X’, during which we’d come to understand and like each other and our respective musical choices.
As usual ‘All About Jazz’ had it right: “Bruford moves so effortlessly between his electronic drum system - which allows him to trigger keyboard samples, freeing up Bates to play his Eb Peck horn and trumpet - and his acoustic kit, that it's often only the very presence of Bates on a horn that indicates it's Bruford creating the chordal backdrop”. That was the plan, but it was often a bit more lumpy than that.
Perhaps my favourite piece on the album was ‘Candles Still Flicker In Romania's Dark’, written by the tenor horn player and keyboardist Django Bates. It was inspired by the harrowing TV pictures of the Romanian orphanages discovered after the fall of the Romanian dictator Ceaușescu, executed by firing squad on Christmas Day, 1989. As the Guardian newspaper put it: “They were the pictures that, for many across the world, were the defining image of the aftermath of Romania’s 1989 revolution: emaciated children clothed in rags, looking into the camera with desperate eyes amid the squalid decay of the country’s orphanages”. Still, the candles still flicker: there is hope even in a world as stratospherically cruel as the one we shared with Ceaușescu.
Being still behind a drumset and letting the music do the talking is not as easy as you’d think. The late 1980s were the early days of the drummer being able to trigger harmony and melody, so I get the opening chords, sounded by my Yamaha DX 21. (There didn’t seem to be a module, so I had to cart the whole keyboard around with me as part of my drum kit). I love the arrangement; particularly the sparse unison tenor and bass backing for Django’s piano solo. These boys were, and remain, serious players.
The whole album has a dark side / light side tension. On the darker edge, the music references the Iraqi-Kuwait war, Ceaușescu’s Romanian horrors and the nervous twitching of 'Nerve'. On the brighter side, we ‘splash out’, and we fool around in Pigalle, Paris’ red-light district. In that respect, it’s probably the most international, and socially aware, recording Earthworks ever made. Many years of touring can be enlightening for those who wish to be enlightened. I hope you enjoy it!
#jazz #yes #musicimprovisation #drummer #billbrufordsearthworks #electronicdrums #kingcrimson #peterothtrio
00:00 Hotel Splendour
04:42 Forget-Me-Not
13:07 Candles Still Flicker in Romania's Dark
17:42 Pigalle
24:15 Temple Of Winds
29:17 Nerve
35:25 Splashing Out
40:50 All Heaven Broke Loose
