Mike Ratledge, the final founding member of Soft Machine to leave the band, died this week, so we might have a couple of Softs albums in the next few days.
About 20 years ago, we took our daughter to an event in Simon Langton Grammar School in Canterbury, and was delighted to see Ratledge MR on the school's honours board for winning a scholarship to Oxford in 1962.
School friends Robert Wyatt and Hugh Hopper didn't feature on the honours board, but made up the trio on the band's second album, Kevin Ayers having departed for a life in the sun, being replaced by Hopper, until then the band's roadie. While there are nominally seventeen tracks on the album, each side plays as a whole, pieces running into one another.
The first half is the more accessible, where after a brief musical introduction by Wyatt, there's the lovely Hibou, Anemone and Bear, first section a fantastic sax piece from guest Brian Hopper, before Wyatt's vocals take over, bookended by Wyatt's musical recitation of the alphabet, forwards and backwards. Hullo Der is gently soulful, segueing seamlessly into Dada Was Here (half in Spanish, half English) and a more laidback couple of ditties (including a namecheck for the members of the Jimi Hendrix Experience), ending with the frantic instrumental Out Of Tunes for a breathless end to the first half.
The second part (known as Esther's Nose Job) starts off with a couple of fine songs - As Long As He Lies Perfectly Still, a full band piece written by Ratledge and Wyatt, followed by Dedicated To You But You Weren't Listening, a Hopper composition on which his sparse acoustic guitar accompaniment underplays Wyatt's singing. But the rest of the piece is Ratledge territory - mostly instrumental, far more experimental and challenging, but no less satisfying. Fire Engine Passing With Bells Ringing is suitably amelodic, while the glorious Pig mixes a piano theme, fuzzy bass and bonkers drumming. Concluding section 10.30 Returns To The Bedroom wraps things up with the whole band riffing on a single theme, unfortunately marred by a short drum solo, before a very Keith Emerson-like organ finish.
In Volume Two, the hesitancy of the debut album has been shaken off and the band sound confident in the statements they're making and the risks they're taking. It's an altogether more satisfying album and possibly the one which captures early Soft Machine at their surreal peak, before diving into the modern jazz world.
4* - a fine example of 1960s British psychedelia and whimsy.
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