Track Listing

1. Clarence In Wonderland
2. We Know What You Mean
3. Bossa Nova Express
4. Hope For Happiness
5. Disorganisation
6. We Did It Again
7. Why Are We Sleeping
8. I Should've Known
9. That's How Much I Need You Now
10. I Should've Known
11. Certain Kind

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #102815 in Music
• Released on: 2006-10-02
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .23 pounds

Customer Reviews

They've done it again !
A true gem of a discovery which so very nearly never got released. The sound quality is better than could ever be expected and really immerses you in the performance. And what a performance ! The band start off in a rather subdued and lighter mode with one of their more 'whimsical' tracks, "Clarence in Wonderland". This leads to a slightly more intense version of "We know what you mean" leading into the chirpy melodic "Bossa Nova Express"..... Not bad.... But now the fun really starts.....

The 'Machine now plunge head straight into 'sonic blitzkrieg', as Jon Newey puts it so well in the liner notes with the epic version of "Hope for happiness". Mike Ratledge's organ creates the most extraordinary sounds while the driving bass and drums thunder away with awesome intensity. The solo organ piece "Disorganisation" is a revelation in what MR could do with his instrument. This leads wonderfully into the classic "We did it again", followed by another, "Why are we sleeping?".

The first set ends with what sounds like a slightly truncated version of "I should've known". Following the usual intensely driving organ solo and rather scary surge, the piece slows down in pace and enters that wonderful realm of improvisation where anything can happen...and the Softs oblige with an amazing section of pure experimental exploration...

The two pieces from May 1968 catch the band in between American tours and the second (another version of "I should've known") seems to include a rather unsure guitar now and again....could this be Andy Somers who joined the band around that time for the second leg of the tour??? The liner notes don't mention him but it is tentatively likely.

The CD almost ends with "A certain kind" with Robert Wyatt's wonderfully clear vocals and ability to weave the melody so fluidly around the song structure.

The hidden track is a (hilarious) reminder of what the band had to deal with when playing outside London....

So just sit back, crank the volume up, close your eyes and let your mind take you through the explosions in colour and texture of the music !!

Awesome.

More essential recordings for the rock archeologist
At last we have some recordings that provide a missing link between the 'Rock Generation' demo recordings of 1966, (subsequently a over a decade later gained the name 'Jet Propelled Photograph'), and the first legitimate Soft Machine studio recording of 1968. Many of the tunes on the 'Middle Earth Masters' will be found on both these and other recordings - but on this album the gloves are off, as recording studio restrictions were not imposed. This is early Machine (post Daevid Allan), freaking out with audience and having the space to improvise.

At first listening a non-Machine fan will be most disappointed especially by the sonic quality, discussed in quite some detail in the liner notes. However, a Machine freak should be delighted. Then anybody curious about early prog and jazz rock fusion bands needs to show a little tolerance. But beneath the distortion, the channel imbalance and vocals lost in the distance, lurks a wealth of great inventive music. We are lucky to have these recordings (as liner notes will also reveal), since this is an important oral document in the form of three(?) snap- hot live recordings of progressive music evolving out of the British pop and pop-psychedlia heard for the first time in the mid 60's.

The album has a mix of the 2 to 4 minute pop and/or psychedelic songs which take a few risks, interdispersed with what the out-of-London club and hall managers too often disliked because these longer tunes were almost impossible to dance to. For example there is an extended version of Brian Hooper and co.s 'Hope For Happiness'. This kicks off with Wyatt giving out a vocal drone (the only reminder of the song's former Wilde Flowers' raga incarnation), only a minute or so later to have Ratledge's Lowry smash in - with Ayer's bass - drowning Wyatt's voice out with a startlingly innovative and long keyboard solo. The imbalance of the recorded mix favours Ratledge's organ, but this is what I want, it is superb. What you smacks you in the ears is that in 1967 Ratledge is so ahead of the underground keyboard pack, e.g. Emerson or Wright, and he ain't playing in the blues-jazz style of Brian Auger, Graham Bond, Stevie Winwood or Georgie Fame (to name a few). His technique is excellent, the rock improv is innovative (or literally 'progressive'), and the use of sonic distortion to extend the range of limited effects from a pre-synth keyboard was then frightenly new. How much of this resulted from his post graduate studies in music? The CD is worth its price for these insights to what really was happening almost night by night in the progressive underground scene in the UK.

As Jon Newey (current editor of Jazzwise), reminds in a second set of liner notes: what you hear on this CD is remarkably like being in the acoustically unfriendly cellar of the Middle Earth Club in London's Convent Garden, front row, watching the Soft Machine trio energetically sweat out this new progressive music for the punters. I'm reminded so much of that wall of sound, initially painfully loud in many other clubs and halls at the time from many other 60's bands - and the young me loving it.

Not an album for all, but Machine freaks and rock historians ought to be queuing up to buy and play this over and over. And as a final thought if Machine were sampled in Middle Earth back in 1967, does anybody have Pink Floyd from the period?

Brilliant even with fuzzy/inaudible vocals
Okay so the sound quality, particularly the audibility of the vocals on, We Know What YOu Mean, is a bit poor but this the mid-sixties. Also as has been mentioned in other reviews, many of these tracks have been released before but the over all package is a more rounded picture of the band at that time. This CD is well worth having and the sparse version of Clarence in Wonderland is a treat, even if you have the BBC sessions Soft Machine version and the Kevin Ayers solo version. This is the ultimate band for high quality music from a surprisingly large live archieve. Every time I think that there cannot be much more to add my Soft Machine collection along comes another live set.