1967/ 1976 Recorded live at the PizzaExpress Jazz Club, Siho, june 23rd and 24th 2001, "Footlose and Fancy Free" is a good album if Classic Fusion please you. Only that this album is all acoustic. But this is only a small detail.

Bill Bruford was the drummer of Yes and King Crimson and in first UK album Bill plays a good related Jazz Rock version of Symphonic Prog. So it seemed natural, even considering the evolution of King Crimson, that Bill conceive great Jazz albums. I do not have other albums by Bill (soloist or with Earthworks) but this live album is extremely good, for me.

Fusion or not (but this is fusion? Hmmm... Because no?) Bill played with great technique and precision and the rest of the band is great (Steve Hamilton to piano is a great machine as Patrick Clahar to saxes). In general this album is for connoisseurs, although very immediate and not too technical. As in other jazz albums, for me is the final result that should OK, for me. 2 hours of Jazz that weigh no to anyone and, of course, frees the mind. It is clear that this album present more Jazz that Rock. And not because acoustic.

In definitive if for you Bill Bruford is only Yes, King Crimson or UK... You are outside of the road. Bill Bruford is only a drummer, in this case a great Jazz drummer. That please you or not.

M.Neumann The second consecutive live release by Bill Bruford's celebrated quartet is even stronger than "Footloose and Fancy Free", with enough cross-genre appeal to attract even those unrefined rockers normally lacking the patience for traditional Jazz.

But of course this is hardly traditional Jazz, is it? Bruford may have stepped off the gravy train years ago, but the drummer's impeccable Prog Rock credentials give his new music an energy and drive not often found in even the most rocking of Jazz Rock fusions. The result is a louder and livelier set than on the earlier CD, vividly captured with near documentary you-are-there fidelity.

It helps that the band was playing a larger venue this time out, and to a crowd obviously comfortable with rock 'n' roll protocol (or lack thereof: Jazz audiences don't generally hoot and whistle with such raucous abandon). Their enthusiasm must have been contagious, and the band responds with fiery readings of (mostly) new material, all instrumental of course, and every song highlighting the dazzling virtuoso turns of pianist Steve Hamilton and new horn player Tim Garland.

The latter in particular shines in his melancholy bass clarinet introduction to "Bajo del Sol" (an otherwise energetic jam featuring one of Bruford's patented, rattling rimshot and trap solos, played over a backdrop of syncopated flamenco handclaps), and in the climactic "Speaking With Wooden Tongues", where he's either using some sort of note splitter or playing two saxophones simultaneously.

And then there's Bruford himself, a musician who knows more ways to dissect and reassemble a rhythm than any mere drummer I've ever heard. If you only know him through the music of King Crimson or Yes, and haven't yet acquired a taste for his recent, more orthodox Jazz recordings, this might be an ideal introduction to his post- Prog career: it's the work of an artist always looking forward, and at the same time returning to his Fusion roots, circa 1977. The two-part title track of his debut solo album "Feels Good To Me" even provides the suitably upbeat encore here.

M.Neumann Including Bill Bruford's acoustic quartet here at Jazz Music Archives is more than just a token courtesy to a erstwhile Progressive Rock drummer whose rimshots have galvanized some of the better bands of the previous 30 years. Since he first poked his head out from under the (King) Crimson umbrella in the middle 1970s, Bruford has accomplished something few other Prog artists have managed: he actually progressed, right out of the Art Rock ghetto and into that exclusive fraternity of world-class musicians for whom such mundane questions of genre and style no longer apply.

But make no mistake: this isn't Fusion, or any sort of ersatz jazz rock pastiche. This is the real thing, presented in its purest and most organic form: live in front of an intimate but enthusiastic audience, and played with enough heart and soul to make a believer out of even the most stubborn headbanger.

It was the live setting, as much as the marquee value of Bruford's sterling reputation, which recommended this two-disc package in the first place. I had lost touch with the drummer's solo career after his first few albums in the late 1970s, but the maturity of the songwriting here should come as no surprise to anyone familiar with his background. The music is uniformly warm and sunny, composed and arranged with a confidence matched only by the deceptive ease of each performance.

Listening to the CDs, it's easy to understand how Bruford became frustrated with the cold, metallic precision of the double-trio King Crimson in the 1990s. But you can still hear the echoes of his Prog Rock roots, particularly on the up-tempo jams of "Cloud Cuckoo Land", "The Emperor's New Clothes", and the exhilarating title track opening Disc One (fans of Bruford Levin Upper Extremities will also recognize the song "Original Sin", no less engaging for its lack of electronics in this version).

I won't spoil the newcomer's joy of discovery by cataloguing my list of highlights, which are pretty evenly distributed throughout the two discs and between each of the four players. Bruford remains, as always, a democratic bandleader, but it would be wrong not to at least mention his climactic drum solo in the "Bridge of Inhibition" encore. After the more measured playing in the rest of the set this song tosses and turns like a hyperactive Levantine belly dancer after too much strong Turkish coffee, and Bruford's solo spot, accompanied by a staccato piano and throbbing upright bass, is without exaggeration one of the most exciting two-and-one-half minutes in my entire music collection.