skip to main |
skip to sidebar
...wilde flowers from canterbury was an early configuration of some of the cats that would hook up in the soft machine/caravan axis to produce some hep vibrations on the psych-pop-jazz front later in the sixties...bo diddley beats mixing up mose alison with bohemian wispyness...suburban hipsters carving out a mod jazz world buried in the albion countryside away from the city blare, sailing reefered dreams on the village pond, lazy afternoons of jazz pondering, connecting harlems 125th street with doses of sandoz from the hollingshead institute for expanding HEPocity...modal blather navigating the wobbly marshmallow midnights of the homeward night bus to the twilight zone...the scratchy state of some of these acetates give the archival nature of the release an authentic glow, field recordings from the middle class basement of stolen marijuana moments...
...early gomelsky sessions from this canterbury combo that have had a myriad of releases, this has been put out under different guises plenty of times in the last 4 decades or more...some cats don't dig it too much but any mid six oh underground noise is at the very least interesting and this sounds real nice and makes for a good beginning when spinning some softs on a green afternoon...
...excellent first wax from thesofts, all the more remarkable for being taped quickly in the middle of a tour of uncle sams autocrazy (1968), everything is in place, at least for this LP, psychedelic pop with avant jazz moves vearing in and out making it flow, lazy grooving on warm afternoons by the river bank indulging in a tab of high class sandoz...this is singular pop-psych in the way the floyd first disk was, it's psychedelic in a free-form way, though structured nothing sounds as it would last, a fleeting moment in the tributary of rock'n'roll, complicated arrangements for pop tunes that have a commerciality yet are not selling themselves in the market place, they last as long as they last, no more no less, while some cats listening they are doing what they were written for, to comunicate the NOW, both bands bought the fun side of avant garde to play in the tunes, plus interesting lyrics...they'd been together for about four years, in various shapes and forms by the time this came around and it shows they'd learnt to work very loosely yet tight, in the best possible way, the jazz way, the intermingling of ideas and playing is wonderful, not a bit seriously po-faced as some of the later work, the name should have been changed after the third disk to protect the groovy but that maybe somewhat unfair but slightly obvious...the whole canterbury scene in some ways is built entirely on possibilities thrown up by what's happening within the walls of the groove...
...second effort from the soft machine, carrying on from where the first left, perhaps the jazzbo tones were turned up slightly, not quite as pop but the original softs sense of humour is still intact, not too much po-faceism (yet), everything grooving nicely...there's a 'jazz-rock' vibe happening throughout but it's not the accepted jazz-rock as it came to be recognised, the machine probably don't realise it's happening, just moving along natrually, doing it as it comes...there's a political consciousness at work, a layabout beatnik way of looking at things, through the distorted reality mirror that true original thinkers and pioneers view the world...freeform avant noodling comes into play as if suddenly they are all hit with a giant LSD rush, a whole trip takes place in a few seconds then fades away, to return later with more bubbles and reflections...very much a worthwhile spin and a great example of london, via canterbury 'underground' rock from the club years of the late 60's...
...although somewhat rough round the edges this is indeed a very nice archive of the softs at the home of london hippydom, the roundhouse in early seventy-one...they give out with a real cool full-on-attack of prog-jazz, plenty of fuzz and wah and skronk with overlays of squeals and scrapes...the keyboard wails and moans while the sax shreaks, the drums clatter over rumbling bass, all with a funky abandon that would eventually leave as the personal left...the recording date allows for robert to still be with the combo and elton deans saxaphone lends a heavy cushion for the others to bounce off, so all in all an essential look at the last of the real soft machine (kevins departure is another bag completely)...
...wilde flowers from canterbury was an early configuration of some of the cats that would hook up in the soft machine/caravan axis to produce some hep vibrations on the psych-pop-jazz front later in the sixties...bo diddley beats mixing up mose alison with bohemian wispyness...suburban hipsters carving out a mod jazz world buried in the albion countryside away from the city blare, sailing reefered dreams on the village pond, lazy afternoons of jazz pondering, connecting harlems 125th street with doses of sandoz from the hollingshead institute for expanding HEPocity...modal blather navigating the wobbly marshmallow midnights of the homeward night bus to the twilight zone...the scratchy state of some of these acetates give the archival nature of the release an authentic glow, field recordings from the middle class basement of stolen marijuana moments...
...early gomelsky sessions from this canterbury combo that have had a myriad of releases, this has been put out under different guises plenty of times in the last 4 decades or more...some cats don't dig it too much but any mid six oh underground noise is at the very least interesting and this sounds real nice and makes for a good beginning when spinning some softs on a green afternoon...
...excellent first wax from thesofts, all the more remarkable for being taped quickly in the middle of a tour of uncle sams autocrazy (1968), everything is in place, at least for this LP, psychedelic pop with avant jazz moves vearing in and out making it flow, lazy grooving on warm afternoons by the river bank indulging in a tab of high class sandoz...this is singular pop-psych in the way the floyd first disk was, it's psychedelic in a free-form way, though structured nothing sounds as it would last, a fleeting moment in the tributary of rock'n'roll, complicated arrangements for pop tunes that have a commerciality yet are not selling themselves in the market place, they last as long as they last, no more no less, while some cats listening they are doing what they were written for, to comunicate the NOW, both bands bought the fun side of avant garde to play in the tunes, plus interesting lyrics...they'd been together for about four years, in various shapes and forms by the time this came around and it shows they'd learnt to work very loosely yet tight, in the best possible way, the jazz way, the intermingling of ideas and playing is wonderful, not a bit seriously po-faced as some of the later work, the name should have been changed after the third disk to protect the groovy but that maybe somewhat unfair but slightly obvious...the whole canterbury scene in some ways is built entirely on possibilities thrown up by what's happening within the walls of the groove...
...second effort from the soft machine, carrying on from where the first left, perhaps the jazzbo tones were turned up slightly, not quite as pop but the original softs sense of humour is still intact, not too much po-faceism (yet), everything grooving nicely...there's a 'jazz-rock' vibe happening throughout but it's not the accepted jazz-rock as it came to be recognised, the machine probably don't realise it's happening, just moving along natrually, doing it as it comes...there's a political consciousness at work, a layabout beatnik way of looking at things, through the distorted reality mirror that true original thinkers and pioneers view the world...freeform avant noodling comes into play as if suddenly they are all hit with a giant LSD rush, a whole trip takes place in a few seconds then fades away, to return later with more bubbles and reflections...very much a worthwhile spin and a great example of london, via canterbury 'underground' rock from the club years of the late 60's...
...although somewhat rough round the edges this is indeed a very nice archive of the softs at the home of london hippydom, the roundhouse in early seventy-one...they give out with a real cool full-on-attack of prog-jazz, plenty of fuzz and wah and skronk with overlays of squeals and scrapes...the keyboard wails and moans while the sax shreaks, the drums clatter over rumbling bass, all with a funky abandon that would eventually leave as the personal left...the recording date allows for robert to still be with the combo and elton deans saxaphone lends a heavy cushion for the others to bounce off, so all in all an essential look at the last of the real soft machine (kevins departure is another bag completely)...
No comments:
Post a Comment