Soft Machine - Softs - 1976 (2012 Japan)

Download this torrent!

Soft Machine - Softs - 1976 (2012 Japan)

Category: Music
Total size: 643.69 MB
Added: 2025-03-10 23:39:09

Share ratio: 4 seeders, 2 leechers
Info Hash: 2C02EF2944D98E4DDD254C3CF0C93F98FD21D3D6
Last updated: 16.2 hours ago

Genre: Canterbury Scene Media: CD Country of disc (release): Japan Year of publication: 2012 Publisher (label): Air Mail Recordings Japan / Soft Machine Catalog number: AIRAC-1668 Country of artist (group): UK Audio codec: FLAC (*.flac) Rip type: tracks+.cue Audio bitrate: lossless Duration: 00:45:13 Tracklist: 1. Aubade (1:51) 2. The Tale of Taliesien (7:17) 3. Ban-Ban Caliban (9:22) 4. Song of Aeolus (4:31) 5. Out of Season (5:32) 6. Second Bundle (2:37) 7. Kayoo (3:27) 8. The Camden Tandem (2:01) 9. Nexus (0:49) 10. One Over the Eight (5:25) 11. Etika (2:21) Personnel: Roy Babbington – bass guitar John Etheridge – acoustic and electric guitars John Marshall – drums, percussion Alan Wakeman – soprano and tenor saxophones Karl Jenkins – piano, electric piano, pianette, string and Mini-Moog synthesizers, orchestrations Mike Ratledge – synthesizer (3, 4) Cardboard sleeve (mini LP) reissue from Soft Machine featuring the high-fidelity Blu-spec CD format (compatible with standard CD players) and 2012 24-bit remastering. The cardboard sleeve faithfully replicates the UK LP. Includes a booklet written in English. Part of a three-album Soft Machine Blu-spec CD cardboard sleeve reissue series featuring albums "Bundles," "Softs," and "Alive And Well Recorded In Paris." At this point in the band's history, Soft Machine might be considered an example of Theseus' paradox, akin to the original axe that George Washington used to cut down the cherry tree -- original except that the head had been replaced three times and the handle twice. On Softs, Mike Ratledge, the only remaining original bandmember present on Bundles, the group's preceding Harvest LP, was relegated to guest status, contributing synthesizer to only two tracks, "Song of Aeolus" and "Ban-Ban Caliban." Otherwise, keyboard duties now fell completely to Karl Jenkins, who joined the band prior to the recording of Six and had gradually taken over the conceptual reins as the Softs finished their tenure with Columbia and moved over to Harvest. On Softs more than ever before, Soft Machine was Jenkins' band; he composed fully seven of the LP's 11 tracks, making the album a vehicle for his own artistic conception. And yet, as Soft Machine albums go, this one is just fine, thank you. Jenkins had always put his own personal stamp on the material he wrote for the band, but he also retained elements of a Soft Machine style that emerged around the time Ratledge began penning LP side-long opuses on Third: a marriage of modalism and minimalism with simple but memorable themes in layered counterpoint and an occasional backdrop of rippling, echoey overdubbed electric keyboards, giving the music a trippy, trance-inducing quality. Nimble keyboard and reed solos were also an important element of the Soft Machine sound, although, as the band entered its Harvest fusion period, they tended to take a back seat to the work of fleet-fingered electric guitarists, first Allan Holdsworth on Bundles and then John Etheridge here. With Etheridge proving that Holdsworth wasn't England's only blindingly fast fusion guitar riff-meister, and with new saxophonist Alan Wakeman being a somewhat heftier reedman than Jenkins, the Softs lineup was plenty strong enough in the soloing department, so Jenkins could concentrate on overdubbing an arsenal of keyboards to give the music its overall structure and mood. Meanwhile, the Roy Babbington (bass) and John Marshall (drums) rhythm-section team, intact since Seven, was as fine as ever, kicking the band into overdrive at the drop of a hi-hat. While Softs has plenty to satisfy the Canterbury and jazz-rock fusion fan, another stylistic element -- new age -- can be heard blowing in with the synthesized wind and strings of the slow and lovely "Song of Aeolus." A precarious balance is usually maintained and the music keeps its footing in jazz-rock, although Softs certainly has more polish than grit. Moments of subtlety and understatement, like the pastoral soprano saxophone and acoustic guitar duet of the opening "Aubade" and Etheridge's folk-jazz duet with himself on the album-closing "Etka," are balanced by passages of high drama, or perhaps grandiosity -- so many layers of guitars and keyboards are piled onto the closing of "The Tale of Taliesin" (imagine the Beatles' "I Want You [She's So Heavy]" coda performed by Philip Glass) that one is tempted to shout, "Enough already!" But when the band gets it right -- the careful buildup and breakdown of lovely themes on "Out of Season" and the ethnic fusion-tinged groove of "Ban-Ban Caliban," for example -- Softs soars