Warthur Wyatt spent about a decade tinkering away with compilations and EPs before bringing out his sole studio album of the 1990s, the sunny and benign Shleep. It opens with a jaunty tune about Wyatt's imagination running away from itself, which is a rather good summation of the album; with the aid of legendary guests such as Brian Eno and Paul Weller, Wyatt (and, for most of the tracks, his songwriting partner and wife Alfreda Benge) produces a range of tunes ranging from whimsical pop to free jazz/ambient fusion nursery rhymes and everything in between. In other words, it's a mature and relaxed revisit of most of the different musical territories he has visited in his long career, and it's hard not to be won over by it.

idlero I was never a Robert Wyatt fan and wasn't 'exposed' too much ( I actually tried a couple of his albums and dropped them) to his music, which in this case may be an advantage because I had no big expectations of this album. `I'm not a jazz musician,' said Robert Wyatt once, `but it's the fountain from which I drink, so I piss some of it out in my records.' Well, I can say he p....ed quite a lot of it in this album in which he collaborates with saxophonist Gilad Atzmon, violinist Ros Stephen, and Stephen's Sigamos String Quartet. Atzmon has previously played on Wyatt's albums and collaborated with Stephen on Gilad With Strings, a project honouring Charlie Parker's dalliance with classical orchestration. The 11 tracks include seven jazz standards(Laura, In a Sentimental Mood,What a Wonderful World), two originals(The Ghosts Within being the best IMHO) and two jazzy reworkings of Wyatt originals(Maryan, At last I am free). Wyatt sings on 9 tracks and whistles on one, Atzmon brings the Middle-Eastern flavours on most of the tracks on one or more of soprano and alto sax, clarinet, bass clarinet and accordion. The music is dreamy, restrained, reflective, lush, spiced in the right places with Atzmon's Middle Eastern accents. Wyatt's version of "What a Wonderful World" is a very nice surprise too. The approach is unconventional, but the result is beautiful chamber jazz. An album for the late hours of the day.

Warthur Robert Wyatt has only rarely given live performances since the launch of his solo career, so Theatre Royal Drury Lane is one of the few live albums we're ever likely to see from him. It is a shame, therefore, that I can't recommend it as heartily as I would like to. Wyatt is clearly in high spirits during the recording, opening the gig with a shambolic (and I suspect deliberately shoddy) runthrough of Dedicated To You But You Weren't Listening before getting to the meat of the matter. Naturally, material from Rock Bottom is present in spades, and whilst Wyatt and his backing musicians make a decent go of rearranging those strange studio nuggets into something resembling a tune a conventional band lineup could play, the process means that some of them lose their magic (though the version of Little Red Riding Hood Hit the Road here is decent).

The main problem with the album is the sound quality, which is really rather poor even for the era - and the mix isn't great either, so the joyous cover version of I'm a Believer that ends the album is rather murky and Ivor Cutler's poetry readings are almost completely swamped - a crying shame. I'd say this definitely fits the criteria of "collectors/fans only", since I can't really recommend the album to anyone who wasn't already a huge Wyatt fan; anyone else is better experiencing the music here in the studio album renditions.

Warthur Recorded in the wake of Wyatt's life-changing accident which left him without the use of his legs and therefore unable to drum as he previously used to, Rock Bottom is the most beautiful and haunting album Wyatt ever made, and one of the best to come out of the Canterbury scene. Haunting submarine soundscapes construct an album packed with love (especially when the subject of Alfreda Benge, Wyatt's partner who he married on the day of the album's release comes up), anger, frustration and hope. Love songs are ten a penny in rock music, but it takes a rare sort of confidence to invite the object of said song on to cap off the performance by fondly rebuking your hyperbole; this is precisely what Wyatt does. The closing performance by Ivor Cutler is the eccentric capstone on a very strange structure indeed, and one which has yet to cease yielding its secrets and treasures.

Warthur Robert Wyatt's End of an Ear isn't a serious attempt to kick off a solo career - Rock Bottom would play that role four years later - so much as it represents Wyatt letting off a bit of steam. The Soft Machine had just recorded Third, an album on which Wyatt's drumming naturally played an essential role but on which his vocals were limited to one song - his own Moon In June, a composition the rest of the band were so disinterested in he had to perform most of it himself. This was all part of a general tendency in the Machine to veer away from the inclusion of vocals after the release of Volume Two (in which Wyatt's singing played a major role), which would culminate in their fourth album being released without any singing from Wyatt being included whatsoever.

The fact that Wyatt lists "Mouth" under his portfolio of musical instruments on the liner notes is a hint as to the point of this album - to give him a chance to express his unique style of scat singing and his use of his voice as his most delicate and diverse musical instrument in a way which he simply was no longer allowed to do in the Soft Machine. It's a stinging rebuke to Messrs. Ratledge and Hopper, who had been driving the Machine in a firmly instrumental direction at this point, as far as free jazz goes there's a delicate, shimmering beauty to the album which when it comes through clearly is quite delightful. The album doesn't soar to heights of supreme excellence, but it is a skilled reminder of just what the human voice can achieve, and in that sense more than exonerates itself as a showcase for Wyatt's vocal talents. Personally, I think the Soft Machine's decision to sideline Wyatt's singing was absolutely shameful, a waste of a wonderful talent. Fortunately, on Matching Mole's albums and in his solo career, Wyatt would not be silenced.