Live Review: Pete Roth Trio featuring Bill Bruford at The Verdict, Brighton

It’s not often you get to sit a few feet away from one of the most vital British drummers of the last half-century in action. Bill Bruford, of course, is revered for stints with Prog giants Yes and King Crimson, and jazz-leaning later work including his electric outfit Earthworks. In 2009, he retired from live performance but, in the last few years, has made an untrumpeted return to the stage, playing low-key gigs in German-born electric guitarist Pete Roth’s trio, with Mike Pratt on bass guitar. Now a tour of small UK venues brings them to Brighton’s award-winning club, The Verdict, on a rainy Friday night.

The venue is packed, and 75-year-old Bruford’s presence elicits rapturous appreciation but, within moments of lurching into a stiff ‘Billie’s Bounce’, it’s apparent that something isn’t quite right. Bruford is having difficulty keeping in time and there’s barely a trace of swing. For a drummer renowned for allying steely precision with innate feel, it’s a glaring disappointment. Meanwhile, the trio doesn’t really hang together. Roth is a competent though unremarkable guitarist. Pratt turns out a couple of nicely mellifluous solos but lacks punch. A few times Bruford seems intent on hunkering into the ‘flying brick wall’ power-improv he once mustered with Crimson bassist John Wetton but it never sticks. When Roth and Pratt explore more delicate textures, as on a wafting evocation of Dvořák’s ‘New World Symphony’, Bruford clatters on a pair of unforgivingly loud hi-hats with little dynamic sensitivity.

But does it matter? Roth and Pratt are all smiles and, except for a few conspicuously empty seats for the second set, The Verdict’s loyal punters are clearly digging seeing a musician of Bruford’s stature in an intimate setting, bashing through relatively undemanding standards such as ‘Summertime’ and ‘Donna Lee’. Who am I to rain on their parade?