Bill Bruford’s Earthworks - Candles Still Flicker In Romania’s Dark (Quattro, Tokyo, 2nd Dec, 1991)

Bill Bruford: Drums Django Bates: E flat “peck“ horn, keyboards Iain Ballamy: Saxophone Tim Harries: Bass #billbruford #earthworks Ah, well now, I think this is something special. 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. 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 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 melo