LAND OF COCKAYNE

This is the final Soft Machine album and they went out with barely a whimper. This album hardly have a single trace of Soft Machine DNA in it. The horrid opening track says it all. Nice violins and the horrible pop sound with violins from the 1970s surrounding a hopeless melody. The vocals does not improve it either. Background vocals on a Soft Machine album is heresy. The saxophone takes over and fills in on some honey dripping overly sugar coated melodies. There are some pretty good jazz melodies here where the band tries go end the Soft Machine era with some guts bravado. But most of the melodies here is too overly sugar coated with this horrendous laidback pop and fusion sound.

The only good thing on this album is Jack Bruce's bass and Allan Holdsworth's guitars. Most of the songs are utterly horrible and not worthy inclusion on any albums. Yes, they sound like Spyro Gyra on this album, Soft Machine. The saxophone is the same and it totally dominates this album. That is all I can say about this weak, weak album which rivals Rubber Riff as the worst ever Soft Machine album. I will stick to the other albums instead of those two and forget this album.

2 stars (barely)

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