Soft Machine

[Teasing the Korean]

Re-investigating Soft Machine after finding the "Original Album Classics" CD set of albums 3-7 for like 10 bucks. I'd had some (not all ) of this on vinyl for ages, but I'm always spinning new vinyl, so stuff gets lost in the shuffle and somewhat forgotten, even though I know it's there and I know it's great.

I've had these 5 CDs on repeat for several days now, at home, in the car, at work. Don't know what the consensus is, but I think all five of these albums are solid top to bottom.

This stuff is like the missing link between 70s Miles, Brian Eno, Goblin and Stereolab.

[alankin]

Great stuff.

[GA Russell]

About 2000 I got a copy of Weather Report's Black Market from BMG, and I heard something that reminded me of Soft Machine there. I suppose that the Softs borrowed something from it.

[B. Clugston]

It is wonderful stuff. I used to be Wyatt-era die-hard, but have been enjoying some of the later stuff, like 6, Bundles and the live disc with Phil Howard. They were like Rasputin, every time they'd put out a mediocre album and lose a key member you would think they'd be finished but they would bounce back.

[mjzee]

I really liked 3, 6 & 7. 4 & 5 were good, but in 6 & 7 they got into some vampish grooves that were a lot of fun. I guess Ratledge was phasing out around then; I found them much less interesting after he left. 1 & 2 were OK, but a much different band, and the rapid edits and such were wearying to listen to.

Karl Jenkins has had quite the career since then. Anyone familiar with Adiemus? The first album also had Ratledge.

[StarThrower]

Cuneiform has released a number of excellent archival recordings including a 1973 live broadcast (NDR Workshop) with a great quality DVD.

I like all of the Hugh Hopper, and Robert Wyatt albums I've heard as well.

[7/4]

Bundles is like blammo, wham...with Holdsworth on it.

[mjzee]

crooksandliars.com has some Softs radio broadcasts available for streaming.

[alankin]

About 2000 I got a copy of Weather Report's Black Market from BMG, and I heard something that reminded me of Soft Machine there. I suppose that the Softs borrowed something from it.

Soft Machine's core albums were recorded before that WR album.

[GA Russell]

Alan, I think that I'm thinking of their EMI albums.

[A Lark Ascending]

Lots of discussion here about Soft Machine and the scene around them:

Soft Machine (along with King Crimson) were one of my principal routes into jazz (and into more abstract music in general).

1 + 2 are quirky psychedelic pop/rock - to some people the classic era, though I only heard them in retrospect around '73 so I favour the next era.

3, 4, 5 are my favourites - they were contemporary when I was first listening. Much more 'serious' with increasingly strong left-field jazz influences (Elton Dean seemed to push them that way) but also an influence from classical minimalism. Although they were bracketed as 'jazz-rock' they sounded completely different to the US version (Ian Carr's Nucleus always sounded as if they had more in common with Miles and Weather Report than SM).

6 + 7 when Jenkins replaces Dean enjoyable too though I'd say the minimalism grows whilst the freer tendencies diminish.

I only know the music after that vaguely - always seemed too influenced by American fusion of the time for me (maybe I'd like it more now as I've come to enjoy Weather Report).

I'd also recommend the two double CDs on Hux of BBC broadcasts across the whole of that period. The first one is particularly excellent with a version of Wyatt's vocal tour-de-force 'The Moon in June' with words altered to reflect the BBC studio he was in at the time. There are also a whole host of excellent sounding live recordings of the band at various points in those years on Cuneiform, Hux etc. All worth picking up as the tunes get reassembled in different ways, you get added musicians and there is real jamming.

As for Karl Jenkins, well his music has never been my cup of tea and doesn't really relate to the SM of the 70s - has more in common with Enya to these ears!

If you want a line of development to follow, pick up on Wyatt and Elton Dean, both of whom produced a long catalogue of constantly inventive recordings, Dean in the heart of the UK free-ish scene. Hugh Hopper has done some interesting things too.

The other band I'd recommend is Henry Cow - just a little younger than the Soft Machine but if anything more radical in their experimentation. There's a run of six main albums, a huge, rich live box and then endless solo projects to wallow in.

There's also a very good book on SM:

Edited September 22, 2013 by A Lark Ascending

[sidewinder]

There's also a very good book on SM:

Wish they'd kept it in print. Finding a reasonably priced copy is now mission impossible.

This location recording by the Ratledge/Wyatt/Hopper/Dean lineup, done in Norway, is pretty interesting. Released by Reel as a 2CD with bonus CD-ROM including essays.

[A Lark Ascending]

There's also a very good book on SM:

Wish they'd kept it in print. Finding a reasonably priced copy is now mission impossible.

This location recording by the Ratledge/Wyatt/Hopper/Dean lineup, done in Norway, is pretty interesting. Released by Reel as a 2CD with bonus CD-ROM including essays.

Hopefully, in time, the Kindle (or something similar) will help to keep things of minority interest like this in print. I don't have a Kindle but at the point when a book like this that I can only read that way appears, then I'll spring.

I've been listening through the live SM live discs recently - will put the one you mention next. Recall enjoying it when it came out but don't have a particular memory (there were so many coming out around that time!). These two are very good:

Both by what I think of as the 'classic' line up (with Lyn Dobson on the first).

Edited September 22, 2013 by A Lark Ascending

[RogerF]

Soft Machine along with Ian Carr's Nucleus were my main entry points into jazz, along with Jon Hiseman's Colosseum and Frank Zappa's Hot Rats. Those first five Sony Softs albums are excellent and IMO pivotal in the history of jazz rock. I saw them play at Croydon's Fairfield Halls in the early 1970s doing much of Soft Machine 6 just before it was released...fantastic stuff. The only thing I don't like about the Sony classic albums set is that it wouldn't have killed them to include some new sleeve notes. There wouldn't have been a shortage of people queuing up to write them!

[A Lark Ascending]

And 'Third' still needs a better remastering.

I read a while back that Steven Wilson (the Porcupine Tree chap who has done a great job on King Crimson) had it in his sights.

I'm comfortable with all the others from 1-7 but Third still sounds muggy to these ears. I know it lies in the source but with modern technology and a chap in charge with a passion for the music...

[Carl Baugher]

I'm a fan. Third is my favorite but anything from '68 to mid seventies falls in my preference range.

Edited September 23, 2013 by Carl Baugher

[RayB]

About 2000 I got a copy of Weather Report's Black Market from BMG, and I heard something that reminded me of Soft Machine there. I suppose that the Softs borrowed something from it.

Black Market came out in 1976 by which time the Softs were pretty well finished, could it be that Weather Report borrowed something from Soft machine?

An edit to this after posts 9 & 10, of the EMI albums only 'Alive & Well in Paris' would have been post 'Black market'. I'm not counting 'The Land of Cockayne' as that is just a Karl Jenkins album capitalising on the Soft Machine name (my opinion).

Edited September 23, 2013 by RayB

[GA Russell]

Well, I guess it's possible that Weather Report had been listening to Soft Machine.

[A Lark Ascending]

Third - which set the template for the Columbia era - was recorded in early 1970, before Bitches Brew was released and a year before the first Weather Report album.

I suspect they would have been familiar with Filles de Kilimanjaro and In a Silent Way, the spaciness of which do relate more to that era of SM more than BB or the main WR albums. Wyatt describes himself as a long-term jazz fan who discovered the beauty of pop where the others were pop/rock musicians who discovered jazz. He'd have been well in tune with what was happening.

Stuart Nicholson's book 'Jazz-Rock' does a good job on laying out the longer antecedents of electric jazz than the Miles as-sole-catalyst theory implies.

I've always heard that era of SM as quite different to the US fusion developing at the time. I was part of a crowd who were up to our necks in that Canterbury world as rock music; we had little interest in the likes of Weather Report or Return to Forever.

[Shawn]

Bundles is like blammo, wham...with Holdsworth on it.

Great record and Holdsworth flat out kills it throughout.

[Stefan Wood]

I wouldn't include Goblin or Stereolab with regards to Soft Machine. Apples to oranges......

[Chuck Nessa]

Are these the folks responsible for yogurt?

[Stefan Wood]

or fizzy drinks?

[Guy Berger]

Third - which set the template for the Columbia era - was recorded in early 1970, before Bitches Brew was released and a year before the first Weather Report album.

I suspect they would have been familiar with Filles de Kilimanjaro and In a Silent Way, the spaciness of which do relate more to that era of SM more than BB or the main WR albums. Wyatt describes himself as a long-term jazz fan who discovered the beauty of pop where the others were pop/rock musicians who discovered jazz. He'd have been well in tune with what was happening.

Stuart Nicholson's book 'Jazz-Rock' does a good job on laying out the longer antecedents of electric jazz than the Miles as-sole-catalyst theory implies.

I've always heard that era of SM as quite different to the US fusion developing at the time. I was part of a crowd who were up to our necks in that Canterbury world as rock music; we had little interest in the likes of Weather Report or Return to Forever.

This discussion made me dig out Third. Great album. I think it's an "imperfect" masterpiece; not a criticism, I would say much the same about many of Miles's electric explorations.

And yeah, the Nicholson book is definitely worth reading because his "eclectic origins of jazz rock" seems right to me (though in retrospect he probably should have spent more time on the cross-pollination between R&B and jazz during the post-WW2 era.

(When was IaSW released in the UK?)

[clifford_thornton]

I wouldn't include Goblin or Stereolab with regards to Soft Machine. Apples to oranges......

Stereolab = Neu! + National Health + Catherine Ribiero/Alpes + Alan Stivell + Doug Yule's Velvet Underground.