Track Listing

1. Fanfare
2. All White
3. Between
4. Riff
5. 37 1/2
6. Gesolreut
7. EPV
8. Lefty
9. Stumble
10. 5 From 13
11. Riff II
12. Soft Weed Factor
13. Stanley Stamps Gibbon Album
14. Chloe And The Pirates
15. 1983

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #7148 in Music
• Released on: 2007-02-19
• Number of discs: 1

Amazon.co.uk Review
Rewind have compressed the original 1973 CBS live/studio double onto one CD. By this time, keyboardist Mike Ratledge was the only extant founder member, but bassist Hugh Hopper and drummer John Marshall had already become staunch right-hand men. Karl Jenkins completed the quartet, mirroring Ratledge's electric and acoustic pianos, but making his most significant contributions on oboe, soprano and baritone saxophones. Lurking behind a horrid airbrushed pink cover, the music still has a hard, probing edge: a few years later, what was left of the band would move much further towards the jazz-rock mainstream. The live cuts are characteristically extended, selections merging into a seamless sequence. "All White" highlights the piercing oboe of Jenkins, free-blowing beside Ratledge's chunky electric piano, then the leader's trademark distressed-gothic organ sound is heard at its most extreme during "Riff" and "Lefty", the latter stirring up an energised free-improv storm, boasting some particularly exciting fills from Marshall, who's impressive again during his tight-rolling "5 From 13" solo, scuttling recklessly across the stereo field. On the studio-recorded side, twin electric pianos build up oscillating crosstalk on "The Soft Weed Factor", reminiscent of Terry Riley's systems music, Ratledge weighing in with a mammoth icepick-velocity solo on "Stanley Stamps Gibbon Album". --Martin Longley

Customer Reviews

Moments of rare beauty
Aside from a brief listen to 'Third' when I was way too young to appreciate it, this was my first real and proper encounter with Soft Machine. The album was a perfect soundtrack to those heady days living on the edge, miles from home in London's netherworlds.
The band had a very British take on the jazz/rock styles prevalent at the time, coming from the bohemian Canterbury scene in the sixties, home of Kevin Ayers, Daevid Allen and Caravan. This showed them leaving their 'middle phase' and brought an almost prophetic interest in the kind of repetition that would become popular with the onset of samplers. Most notably with Hugh Hopper's hypnotic often cyclic bass style...check out track six Gesolreut ... cool or what?

This is post-Robert Wyatt Softs, with John Marshall now in charge of the drums, adding a free-rolling precision to the playing. Perhaps the most distinctive voice in this lineup was Karl Jenkins plaintive, other-worldly Oboe and Soprano sax playing. A couple of notes from him and you knew straight away who you were listening to. Mike Ratledge's keyboard sounds were often percussive and hard-edged, adding bite to many of the tunes. Between them, the band had a very distinctive sound that was unmistakeable.

This is a double album, condensed onto a single CD. The first half is a collection of live recordings, the tunes melding into each other seamlessly...and there are some extremely cool sounding pieces on here, but the two that really set this album apart are from the studio album.

The opener The Soft Weed Factor is perhaps one of the band's most memorable compositions. Dreamy and multi-layered, it starts very simply with a light, seven note cycling motif from Hopper's keyboard. It is met with a counter motif interlocking with the first...then a third ...then a new phrase on vibes ... we are starting to build a mesmerising twinkling matrix of similarly voiced instruments...this continues for a good three minutes...and just as you are settled in and nicely hypnotised, the drums and bass kick in with a superbly judged groove. To top it all off, the Karl Jenkins' oboe enters stage left with long sustained hard-edged notes...the sour to the preceding sweet. This is a masterful concoction that lasts for over eleven minutes, and never outstays it's welcome.

The other outstanding tune on the album is Chloe And The Pirates. This is an altogether more etherial piece, utilising reverse tape techniques to create an other-worldly atmosphere with floaty synth pads fluttering round two gently pulsing chords from the keyboard. Almost pastoral woodwind from Jenkins, again reversed, adds a melodic feel, still floaty, some building chords...and then understated drums begin to roll. this is a lovely delicate tune that really outlines the finesse of these players.

Often overlooked in Soft's canon, this is in my opinion one of their best albums, and I really can't recommend it highly enough, especially in it's remastered form.

Soft & Cool
It's good that the original classic Soft Machine CBS albums are getting a definitive remaster/upgraded reissue. I guess everyone will go for the well known volumes 3 to 5 (which feature additional bonus tracks) but what of "Six"? For most people the departure of Robert Wyatt and Elton Dean was the end of the story and it is often forgotten that there was a distinctive late edition of the band in 72-74, exemplified by "Six" & featuring regulars Ratledge and Hopper joined by drummer John Marshall and multi-instrumentalist Karl Jenkins.
"Six" was a double album - in the vogue of the time one disc live / one disc studio, all included on a single CD here (no bonus tracks). Arguably this was the most musically accomplished version of the band. The live album is one long suite, effortlessly gliding back and forth through tunes and themes (mostly drawn from "FIFTH"). It's very tight and fluid, driven by understated, shifting funk or rock rhythmic patterns. The studio album contains just four tracks. "Sot Weed Factor" and "Chloe" are developments out of the languorous style pioneered on "THIRD": Terry Riley-ish loops, loping repetitive funk drum and bass, tinkling keyboards. Jenkins generally eschews jazzy improv, preferring to overlay the tracks with elegant, repetitive, extended lines on oboe or soprano. They are over-used words but I'd have to describe this music as "minimalist" & "cool". It's a far cry from the hyperactive fusion music of the 70s and might even prefigure some of the ambient, trance and trip-hop of the 90s.The other two studio tracks sound like sketches for compositions and don't stand up so well, though Hugh Hopper fans may be interested in his abrasive tape loop piece "1983" as a precursor to some of his solo work.

The album with the best composition of Soft machine
Chloe and the Pirates is an extremely beautiful bright piece of music,with fine atmospheric organ sounds, slowly climbing up and down, steadybass lines and electric piano chords and above all great oboe playing byKarl Jenkins. It's like a bird cry in a mysterious warm afternoonlandscape. For me their very best composition. Also the minimalistic SoftWeed Factor is fascinating. The other two numbers of the studio part areless convincing. Better then is the first of the two live sets.