Soft Machine
Fourth/Fifth

This is the reissue in a double pack - and of course digitized - of their two albums from 1971 and 1972. A total of 14 tracks. These are the ones that marked the stylistic shift that would lead the "Soft Machine" to move closer and closer to a transavant-garde style like Nucleus (many members of Nucleus would eventually join this band). The journey of Nucleus and Soft Machine is undeniably similar: even the former eventually landed on an electronic sound with funky hues...

The Sixties are bidding farewell. With Kevin Ayers and Daevid Allen now roaming on their own (the Australian Allen apparently cannot return to England due to a passport issue and will form the Gong in Paris) and Robert Wyatt considering leaving the group to form Matching Mole (he has already recorded an album on his own and Fourth will be his last collaboration with the Machine), it is keyboardist Michael Ratledge who takes the reins. The rest of the band consists of the aforementioned Wyatt - still on drums, saxophonist Elton Dean, and Hugh Hopper on bass. These latter two, along with Ratledge, would form the core of the group also in Fifth.

Fourth is their first completely instrumental album and benefits from the contribution of Marc Charig (trumpet), Roy Babbington (double bass), Nick Evans (trombone), Jimmy Hastings (flute, clarinet), and Alan Skidmore (tenor sax). The decisive turn towards the fusion of rock and jazz - already glimpsed in Third - is accomplished here. The jazz rock is obviously present in the early works of Soft Machine (who doesn't remember the splendid "Out-Bloody-Rageous"?), as well as in the works of all the other Canterbury school groups, but there it was characterized by a warmer sound enriched by Wyatt's melodies. The major common point between Fourth and the previous works is the electronic rationality of Ratledge. The original psychedelia is to be sought between the lines, and the album certainly does not satisfy the progressive consumers but much, indeed, those who love Miles Davis, Chick Corea, and total music. The first piece "Teeth" is a brilliant composition enriched by the swing accents of Babbington's double bass, which then gives way to Hopper's electric bass; the piano cascades alternate with the harmonies of the brass (the nuances of Hastings' clarinet are beautiful) and, after a furious "solo" by Ratledge's organ, it all culminates in a collective improvisation. "Fletcher's Blemish" is also a piece of high jazz quality in which the elegiac breath of Elton Dean's sax is replaced by a biting chorus of all the instruments. "Virtually", a suite in four parts by Hopper, reveals some repetitiveness and lengthiness... In short, we are far, far away from the atmospheres of "Moon In June" and "Dedicated To You But You Weren't Listening", even though one cannot help but admire everyone's virtuosity.

A sense of suspension, of unresolved incompleteness, even within the scope of a cool-jazz dimension, is felt in Fifth. Here, John Marshall (formerly of Nucleus and the Jack Bruce Band) replaces Wyatt on percussion, although the initial sessions saw the participation of free jazz drummer Phil Howard. Marshall is as good as Wyatt and undoubtedly much more "technical," but for many the departure of the impish founding member marked the beginning of the decline of Soft Machine. Even in Fifth there is no trace of the canons of that early psychedelic rock (in many ways playful and Zappa-esque). Rage & Energy are indeed present, but, in the end, Fifth closely follows the fourth album (especially in "As If", "All White", "Drop"), and can be considered a pendant to it. No existential tone but rather cold aestheticism, and the concluding impression is that the musicians are searching for a liberating finale that never arrives.