SOFTS

Allan Holdsworth left the band after Bundles and in came another Nucleus member; John Etheridge. Mike Ratledge, the only remaining Soft Machine member left halfway through the recording and Karl Jenkins took over the tangents in addition to writing most of the material here. Alan Wakeman took over Karl Jenkins old job.

Gone too is most of the quirky avant-garde jazz Soft Machine pioneered. Softs is more or less a straight jazz-rock album with some added Soft Machine quirkiness. It can also be compared to their previous album Bundles. Both in style and quality wise.

Most of the material on Softs is simply stunning. The songs from The Tale of Taliesien to Kayoo is simply jazz-rock heaven. Excellent guitar solos backed up by outstanding saxophone and keyboards work. Fabelous ! The material changes between lyrically soft jazz to swinging jazz-rock. Everything here is very melodic, but still very Soft Machine. The rest of the album is the normal Soft Machine quirky fare, including a drum solo and an accoustic guitar piece.

By all standards; this is an excellent album. I still miss some of Karl Jenkins flutes and saxophones. Bundles is still a better album than this, but just by some inches. I love this album.

4 stars

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