Soft Machine

Ladies and gentlemen, please, take your seats... the show is about to begin.

Mr. Hopper's fierce, feverish rasp of fuzz distortion bursts in.

The work of Soft Machine — because this is a work, not just an LP — doesn't hide behind any "coup de théâtre"; the harmonic dissolution is splashed across the front page, without shame or hesitation of any kind.

The curtain finally rises, after more than five minutes, and the horns lay out the central theme of "Facelift". A unison theme for horns and keyboards, the anthem of the ceremony.

This procedure would underpin all the tracks on the album, except for Mr. Wyatt's. Yes, because this time Soft Machine wanted to do things properly. The first two albums, which already boasted all the expressive qualities of Mr. Wyatt, Mr. Ratledge, Mr. Hopper and Mr. Ayers, curiously had one limitation: they attempted, rather clumsily, to merge the individual souls of the band members. The result was a fascinating but unresolved sound, one that contained everything yet amounted to nothing. "Soft Machine Vol. 2" is emblematic of this: the machine really did risk exploding. Instead, the agony was halted with the simplest of solutions: letting each member handle his own material independently — two tracks by Mr. Ratledge, one by Mr. Hopper and one by Mr. Wyatt.

The result is one of the most important albums of all time, a work that still fascinates today for its quality and sensitivity. What can rightly be called "weird music", a magical music. The album was released in 1970.

"Facelift"

From the outset, Soft Machine dive headlong into the realm of jazz; they are, to all intents and purposes, pioneers of a certain strand of jazz-rock. The album's opening, with Mr. Hopper's track, winks at the earlier "In The Court Of The Crimson King" and its first track, "21st Century Schizoid Man". As will happen with the album's other two composers, Mr. Ratledge and Mr. Wyatt, this track too would serve as the blueprint for the rest of Mr. Hopper's solo output: rhythmic pulsations, a free-form horn arrangement and, above all, the apocalyptic drones of his fuzz-bass. Progressive rock was barely a year old, and Soft Machine were already declaring it obsolete, straying into the "middle-earth" that separates jazz from rock, the avant-garde from the classic British sound. Of the original sound, established in the early days of Canterbury by the Australian Ayers, nothing remains except Mr. Wyatt's Dadaist streak.

“Slightly All The Time”

Eighteen minutes of music built on a thematic nucleus stripped down to its bare essentials; with this movement, Mr. Ratledge brings jazz and minimalism together. The initial cell, always entrusted to Mr. Dean's horn section, is continuously restated as a theme with variations. Sometimes the variation is melodic, sometimes rhythmic. Around the 6th minute a sudden acceleration ushers in one of the album's finest moments: Mr. Dobson's flute solo. In this section of the track, special mention must go to Mr. Wyatt's meticulous "jazzy" work on the hi-hat. Constant accelerations and decelerations of tempo characterise the whole piece, built throughout on the alternation of 4(2)+3. The main lines are always entrusted to the horns, which with clockwork precision alternate the main theme with small improvisational developments. An abrupt halt, around the 12th minute, brings us to a new theme, set up by sax and bass. The atmosphere turns leaden, nocturnal. How can one not picture Travis from "Taxi Driver", roaming like a ghost through the New York night at the wheel of his car (a soft machine, perhaps?) while all the creatures of downtown take possession of his territory? The sudden return of the opening theme, again in unison, brings us back to everyday reality, and everything appears as a faint, small, "slightly" memory.

"Moon In June"

The strings of the soul resound... Mr. Wyatt would soon accustom us to hearing "magic music" from his faint, howling voice. The ceremonial rite set up by the previous tracks reaches its climax in this absolute masterpiece, the orgasm of Robert the wolf, who, circling with his pack, courts and conquers us with his hypnotic howl. Indeed, every passage of this movement worms its way insidiously into our memory, and it's truly impossible to shake it off. What's surprising is that it is built from a handful of classic instruments, with no recourse to electronic trickery. The movement benefits from neither Mr. Ratledge's full background in jazz and the avant-garde, nor Mr. Hopper's technical skill. Just an organ and a drum kit for the first 8 minutes, all played by Mr. Wyatt alone. The development is slow and solemn, carrying us toward the climax through the most varied of sonic landscapes: blues, psychedelia, britpop. Suddenly a pause, and a brief theme hinted at by Mr. Hopper's fuzz, ushers us into the section dominated by Mr. Ratledge's solo. Soft Machine are truly in sync in this section; the bassline is epic and transcendental, and Mr. Wyatt's work on drums forcefully earns him a place among the finest drummers of all time. But towering over everything is the werewolf-like vocalising of the ceremony's officiant, showing us the explosion, the Big Bang of the tonal universe, in a vertigo of shattered sounds and snare-drum lashes.

The fragments of that immense explosion remain suspended for about 5 minutes; no rhythm, no harmony — only an alienating melody from Mr. Spall's violin seems to rise up out of the primordial soup's magma. But it is a vain hope: everything is sucked into the vortex of the black hole opened up by the Canterbury minstrel. These are the pieces with which Mr. Wyatt builds the spaceship that carries us into the remote regions of the subconscious. Nothing more is needed to craft a fine piece of music: "...and if, for a moment, you can free your mind from post-rock and drum'n'bass, jungle and trip-hop, exotica and techno-lounge..., steal a handful of minutes away from the breathless hunt for this month's unmissable new album, set aside the year's best-of lists and the one-minute masterpieces, you'll be ready to retrace, once again, the musical and human adventure of Robert Wyatt, the exile whom it is impossible not to love because he is, in his own way, the greatest of them all." (Marco Tagliabue)

"Out-Bloody-Rageous"

Widely considered one of the greatest compositional odysseys of British progressive rock, the closing track is built on strong structural symmetry. In it, Mr. Ratledge no longer hides his cerebral, minimalist streak. The intro, in fact, is purely minimalist, in a style that foreshadows Philip Glass at his best in the years to come; the numerous synthesized lines overlap in a way that seems random but is in fact meticulously calculated. The theme passes to the section led by Mr. Dean, while the rest of the group, piano and bass, lay down the rhythm. Mr. Wyatt's drums then swell forcefully, culminating in a series of horn harmonies.

The entire track takes shape around the anti-symmetry of its main roles, set within an utterly regular musical structure. It's like trying to fit a square peg into a round hole: Mr. Ratledge's keyboards are furious, Mr. Hopper's bass is evocative, and Mr. Dean's horns (the gorgeous solo in the second half) are utterly atmospheric, letting us savour every note. But the minimalist intro/outro promptly returns, closing in on itself what we might consider a mathematical theorem more than a piece of music, in a kind of Big Crunch that mirrors the Big Bang of "Moon In June".

Soft Machine:

Mike Ratledge Keyboards, Organ, Piano

Robert Wyatt Drums, Vocals

Hugh Hopper Bass

Elton Dean Alto Saxophone, Saxello, Saxophone

Lyn Dobson Flute, Horn, Soprano Saxophone

Nick Evans Trombone

Jimmy Hastings Bass Clarinet, Flute, Wind

Rab Spall Violin

Ride the wave of great music

Add OndaRock to your favorite sources on Google Discover. Don't miss our reviews, milestones and latest news straight in your feed.

Follow on Google

09/11/2006