After the dissolution of KING CRIMSON (80's edition), Bill BRUFORD recruited sax player Iaian Ballamy, keyboardist, horn and trumpet player Django Bates and acoustic bass player Mick Hutton to form EARTHWORKS - a perfect platform to showcase his true passion: jazz. Apart from BRUFORD, EARTHWORKS's latest incarnation featured Tim Garland on sax, flute and bass clarinet, Steve Hamilton on piano and Mark Hodgson on bass. The band is credited with six studio albums, two live cd's and one compilation disk.

BRUFORD himself considers their first album (the eponymous 1987 "Earthworks") one of the highlights of his career and perhaps rightly so. Even though it is very much a product of the jazz genre, the eclecticism of influences including world music elements, the varied structures and moods of the compositions, and the dynamic musicianship make this as progressive an album as one can get. With "The Sound of Surprise" released in 2001, however, the band seems to have ditched electronic sound sculptures in favour of a more traditional jazz kit; as a result, the music reaches an almost cool, hard-bop and old-school fusion, not unlike what post-boppers were doing before BRUFORD joined YES in 1968.