SOFT MACHINE — Noisette (review)

SOFT MACHINE — Noisette album cover Live album · 2000 · Jazz Related Rock Buy this album from MMA partners
4/5 ·
Warthur
There's no shortage of archival live material available from the Soft Machine - a great deal of it hailing from that crucial period between the release of Volume Two and the eventual departure of Robert Wyatt from the band, during which the band's transformation from a deranged Canterbury-psych monster to a cool and together jazz-rock unit occurred. But out of that confusing abundance of material, Noisette stands out as a release to pay particular attention to. Unlike many archival releases, it presents more or less one single live performance - specifically, a January 1970 appearance by the band in one of various new lineup configurations they experimented with between Volume Two and Third, adding and subtracting various musicians to the central core of Hopper, Ratledge and Wyatt.

This time around, it's a quintet taking the stage, the extra members being Lyn Dobson on soprano sax and flute and Elton Dean on various flavours of saxophone. (Dean would eventually become a full member of the band.) The addition of the sax section brings the Soft's sound much closer to that on Third than on Volume Two, betraying a huge amount of musical development in the intervening months - just compare to Live at the Paradiso 1969, the sound on which is almost identical to that recorded on Volume Two (once you get past the production issues on Paradiso). In terms of recording quality, Noisette is pretty good for live albums of its era - the one problem I saw being that Wyatt's vocals are very slightly too quiet in the mix, though the emphasis of the band had already gone so heavily over to instrumentals this is less of an issue than it might otherwise have been. (The version of Moon In June on here is an instrumental extract from the larger composition rather than the whole thing.)

The recording combines the liveliness of Volume Two with the epic jazz-rock structures of Third to produce a mixture which wasn't quite captured on either album but which seems to have reverberated throughout the scene; you can see how the music of the likes of Hatfield and the North/National Health, Henry Cow, and Wyatt's own Matching Mole could have been inspired by the burning hot fusion produced by the Softs in the 1970s. The production quality means that I can't quite reach to five stars for this one, but it earns four stars with ease.
Share this review
more

Review Comments

Post a public comment below | Send private message to the reviewer
Please login to post a shout
No shouts posted yet. Be the first member to do so above!

Review Index

Member Zone

Username:
Password:
Stay signed in

Jazz Subgenres

Artists Alpha-index

JMA TOP 5 Jazz ALBUMS

Rating by members, ranked by custom algorithm
Albums with 30 ratings and more
A Love Supreme Post Bop
JOHN COLTRANE
Buy this album from our partners
Kind of Blue Cool Jazz
MILES DAVIS
Buy this album from our partners
The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady Progressive Big Band
CHARLES MINGUS
Buy this album from our partners
Blue Train Hard Bop
JOHN COLTRANE
Buy this album from our partners
My Favorite Things Hard Bop
JOHN COLTRANE
Buy this album from our partners

New Jazz Artists

New Jazz Releases

The Vinny Golia Quintet 2024 : Almasty Avant-Garde Jazz
VINNY GOLIA
Buy this album from MMA partners
Anaconga RnB
CITRUS SUN
Buy this album from MMA partners
Shoot For The Moon Pop/Art Song/Folk
DAVINA AND THE VAGABONDS
Buy this album from MMA partners
Timeless Post-Fusion Contemporary
DAVID BENOIT
Buy this album from MMA partners
Nothing Pop/Art Song/Folk
LOUIS COLE
Buy this album from MMA partners
More new releases

New Jazz Online Videos

Songs My Mom Liked EPK - Anthony Branker
ANTHONY BRANKER
js· 3 hours ago
“INFLUENCES” by Jared Hall, trumpeter & composer
JARED HALL
js· 3 hours ago
Jean-Pierre (feat. Darryl Jones)
BILL EVANS (SAX)
snobb· 14 hours ago
Magic Box
CHRISTOPHE MARGUET
snobb· 14 hours ago
The Peacocks
ANTOINE DRYE
js· 19 hours ago
More videos

New JMA Jazz Forum Topics

More in the forums

New Site interactions

More...

Latest Jazz News

members-submitted

More in the forums

Social Media

Follow us
Follow us on Twitter Become a Facebook fan RSS Feed