Bruford (band)

Bruford were a band assembled and led by former Yes and King Crimson drummer Bill Bruford in the late 1970s.

Bill Bruford formed a Jazz-fusion band for his debut solo album Feels Good to Me, with former Hatfield and the North keyboardist Dave Stewart, young American virtuoso bass guitarist Jeff Berlin and guitarist Allan Holdsworth who had played in Soft Machine and Pierre Moerlen's Gong. This first album also featured Annette Peacock on occasional vocals and British jazz stalwart Kenny Wheeler on flugelhorn. Bruford and Holdsworth then joined the progressive rock group U.K.. After leaving U.K., a second album One of a Kind enlisted the same line-up as the first album and was all instrumental. On the live album The Bruford Tapes (a show originally broadcast for radio station WLIR), guitarist John Clark (formerly of Quasar) replaced Holdsworth. Clark remained on guitar and Jeff Berlin sang vocals for the first time on the third album, Gradually Going Tornado, which also featured Berlin's first composition for the group- "Joe Frazier".

Bruford were active at the end of a vibrant decade for fusion music, with groups like Mahavishnu Orchestra, Return to Forever and Brand X getting much attention (especially from musicians). Though Bruford followed in the tradition of these bands, and was very well received critically and by fans, it reportedly lost quite a bit of money and was dropped by EG Records in 1980, putting a premature end to its existence.

A complete boxed set of Bruford recordings - featuring 8 discs of remastered, remixed and previously unreleased material - was released by Bruford's own Winterfold records label in October of 2017. The unreleased material comprises a complete show at London's The Venue and 18 demos for Bruford's intended fourth studio album. These tracks are rough "works in progress" that were never properly finished and recorded when Bruford were dropped by EG Records. The CD remixes were completed by Jakko Jakszyk.