Bill Bruford's Earthworks
Mandela Room
SUNY Binghamton
Binghamton,N.Y.
1990/10/09

Bill Bruford-acoustic and electronic drums & percussion
Iain Ballamy-keyboards, saxophone
Django Bates-keyboards, eb tenor horn
Tim Harries-acoustic and electric bass


source/lineage-2010 DIME share of a very good Aud recording (lineage for that is pasted below)> Audacity for work referenced below> TLH for torrent creation> DIME

01 Dancing on Frith Street 7:51
02 Bill B Introductory Remarks 0:46
03 Libreville 8:00
04 Bill speaks again 0:45
05 A Stone's Throw 8:28
06 My Heart Declares a Holiday 7:23
07 BB Band Intros 1:09
08 Gentle Persuasion 4:33
09 Downtown 7:15
10 Stromboli Kicks 10:17
11 Bill speaks again 0:49
12 Emotional Shirt 6:08
13 Pilgrim's Way 8:50
14 Bill again 0:58
15 Bridge Of Inhibition 14:57
16 Thud 6:13

This is the first edition of Bill Bruford's Earthworks, and the show roughly coincides with the release of their 2nd album, Dig?. I'd shared a lot of Earthworks shows here as 2023 became 24 while we enjoyed an extended freeloader period to mark DIME's 20th anniversary. The majority of Earthwork shared then featured the later groups where Bill was back on conventional drums. The initial Earthworks here at Binghamton was a child of the mid 80's when electronic drums were an extended "flavor of the month" for a number of years. Bill embraced them, and employed them extensively at this time. Django Bates also played electric keyboards on some pieces, and electric bass was there too on a few songs. That all said, this was a unique group that sounded like no one else at that point (or since). Bruford wrote some of the music, and so did Bates and Ballamy, who were 2 young lions who'd gotten a lot of attention in the mid 80's British jazz scene in bands like Loose Tubes.
This SUNY Bingamton show was recorded and shared here by boeditaper (many thanks to them, and their source info is pasted below). I'd toyed with bringing it back here along with the other Earthworks material shared several months ago, but didn'tget this ready until now. Audacity was used for a few things with this new share to track things a little more precisely relative to song starts. Bill could be a fairly chatty band leader from the stage and the nearly 5 minutes of him addressing the audience now will be separate from the musical tracks. The setlist too is now more accurate than it had been during the show's first run here.
This is a very good audience capture for the time, but the drawbacks would include some nearby talking, particularly earlier in the show, and the fact that the room seemed a bit boomy. Tools in Audacity were used to try to bring out the instruments a little more clearly, and to mitigate some of the moments where the performance volume got more extreme. Levels of applause in the earlier parts of the show were also reigned in a bit. Cuts appear twice in this share where tape flips had once taken place. The only interruption of music involving that takes place during Bridge of Inhibition, and it's fairly minimal. Samples below will give a good idea of what to expect if you're considering grabbing this now.
Finally, it was just Bill's 75th birthday, and he retired from the bandstand about 15 years ago. He certainly had a great career and reputation during the years that he was musically more active. I for one am still hopeful that he might gift us with something musical in the time ahead. Meanwhile, we're nearly at the 34th anniversary of this show date. Enjoy, and thanks again to boeditaper for his earlier work in recording and circulating the show.

boeditaper's source info and some notes copied from the dimebot archive are pasted in below:
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Source:Sony D6 Cassette Master>Realistic Stereo Mic>Sony TC-We 325 Cassette Deck(Playback)>Harmon Kardon CDR 20 Home Burner>CDR>EAC>Flac. Taped By Boeditaper.
Notes:1)Quality Is About A-(Subjective Of Course)
2) Small Cut Disc 2,Track 5 Due To Tape Flip On The Master Tape.


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