BRUFORD: ONE OF A KIND

Bruford's adventures post UK have for some reasons never enthralled me (even UK is not that exciting to this writer as it sounded way too adult and "professional") , but the least we can say is that his early solo albums never resonated with me. While a real fan of JR/F, I must say that by the late 70's, the genre's cold aloofness, precise (way too much) and prissily playing, ultra-technical but soulless "songwriting" never enthused me. Just to make it clear, while I still find Ponty's classic 70's albums or Brand X's early albums rather enjoyable and still get the occasional nowadays, but Weather Report's post 77 albums or

Anyway, with Bruford's all-star line-up of Holdsworth, Stuart and Berlin, this sounded like the winning combination to make a killer of a record, but to this writer, this is mostly a sleeper of an album as I just can't get into, no matter how loud I played it, and the artwork wasn't helping either. While written before AC DC's track, the opening Hell's Bells pales in comparison. Bear with me for a second here: while there is no match on the musical expertise and virtuoso qualities of the present track, it lacks soul, personality and is anything but captivating. All the same, the two-part title track has little effect on me, also.

One of the most evident flaws being Stewart's choice of keyboards sounds: they are the ones generally en vogue at the time, but compared to previous generations of synths, these here really start sounding "cheap". This coupled with the quartet's aspiration to perfection in terms of virtuosity, renders the whole thing tedious and interesting only to themselves and whoever might be musician enough to want to imitate this virtuosi perfection. On the positive side is the incredible musicianship (yes, the very one I criticize so much) of the four artistes, their ability to play incredibly tight as unit, etc. But I much prefer early Pat Metheny's albums in the genre.

While all four musicians have my utmost respect, and I am a fan of many of their previous works (not so familiar with Jeff Berlin's previous career though), I can't help but thinking that some of the clichés and epithets (musical wankery for ex.) hurled at this kind of albums have solid grounds and will always stick with such albums. Not any better than Feels Good To Me, this album is not exciting or only passably interesting, but certainly no more. I fully understand some of the other JR/F enthusiasts calling this type of album essential, but it simply won't be my case.