FIFTH (or 5 )
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Wyatt has departed and Soft Machine move
further into Jazz teritory explored on Fourth.
Wyatt replaced by first, Phil Howard and then John Marshall who
was to remain Soft Machine drummer until the end of their career.
Sleeve notes from a 1979 reissue on CBS
Fifth - CBS 31748
The Soft Machine has hardly been still.
An original affair of 66-67 included the long surviving keyboard
player Ratledge as well as Robert Wyatt, Kevin Ayers and Daevid
Allen.
Those three, severally and collectively, went on to make massive
contributions to the quasi-classical, moonlit world of unnamed
and unnameable European fusion music. That was of course when R+B
had been a feature of Brit life for so long it was hardly worth
mentioning, and Third Stream-which in any case stayed where it
belonged-was quaint at the best.
A single from that era, "Love Makes Sweet Music"
sugegsted little more than another earnest but hamfisted hippy
era rockband. Assurance came to many of us in the subsequent
years and suddenly the Softs were in the pure vangaurd of a
dynamic and craggy jazz related flowering : If, Nucleus,
Colosseum, Mike Westbrook, McLaughlins "Extrapolation"
album. Huge, if brief, landmarks were a brass dominated septet
version of the band, and a heady slot in the 1970 proms.
By then, two albums had been made for the Probe label, which
should explain the titles of both this LP and its immediate
predecessors 3 and 4 ( or if you will Third and Fourth ) - both
still available on CBS.
For those who enjoy grafting order onto the mad thrash of history,
"5" is maybe the peak just passing, the final
resolution of upward energies of the sixties before the steel
faced strom clouds of the mid seventies took over. "I could
still listen to it" admitted Elton Dean nine years after.
The subsequent 6 and 7 - again still in catalogue - complete with
further personel shake ups, delve deeper into the oddball
mysteries of harmony and improvisation. Yet they also returned to
roots they never had, heavy rock and roll.
Where are they now, these machine operators? Mike Ratledge has
gone to ground, reputedly working on private tapes. Phil Howard,
detonator of the early sessions, was last heard of on a North sea
oil rig.
But broadly speaking, in clubs or studios, though out of the
limelight, the guys are still around.
Where are we now? Vivid, vicious excitement, musical barrier cracking links with new wave conciousness and Babylon burning to face the shallow might of TV advertising and top 40-ism? Chaos out of order? Never mind the bread; for Soft Machine the circus is surely once more in town.
notes by Linnet Evans
Track Listing
1. All White (Ratledge)
2. Drop (Ratledge)
3. MC (Hopper)
4. As If (Ratledge)
5. LBO (Marshall)
6. Pigling Bland (Ratledge)
7. Bone (Dean)
Line Up
Elton Dean - Alto sax, saxello, electric
piano
Hugh Hopper - Bass guitar
Mike Ratledge - Organ, electric piano
Phil Howard - Drums ( 1 - 3 )
John Marshall - drums ( 4 - 6 )
Roy Babbington - Double bass ( 4 - 6 )
Recorded at Advision Studios London Nov /
Dec 1971, Jan / Feb 1972
Produced by Soft Machine
Engineered by Gary Martin
Executive producer Sean Murphy