LIVE 1970

This is not one of them.

This live album starts with a painfully bad bootleg quality extracts of Facelift and Moon In June with the Wyatt/Hopper/Dobson/Ratledge setup. My fingers is aching to push the "Stop" button. These 1/4 extracts of these two tracks is painful listening.

Thankfully, the sound picks up a bit with the next setup. It is the classic Wyatt/Hopper/Dean/ Ratledge setup and this should give good quality. The sound quality is still not acceptable compared with Noisette, Grides and Live At Henie Onstad Centre. All those three records are miles better than this one. This setup runs through songs from the Third/Four/Fifth era. Facelift is still given a bit bad treatment here and lacks some of it's vitality. The rest is OK, but nothing more. There are some sporadic glimpses of the greatness of Soft Machine throughout this album. But there are not enough of them to really impress me.

This is not a particular enjoyable Soft Machine live album. The sound is too bad and the dynamics of a great Soft Machine gig is missing here. The inclusion of those two opening tracks is simply not acceptable on an album bearing the name of Soft Machine. Hence my two stars.

2 stars

Share this THE SOFT MACHINE review

Social review comments () BETA

---

---

Review related links

• Send comments to toroddfuglesteg
• Report this review (#261109)
• Buy THE SOFT MACHINE music online with PA partners
• Show all THE SOFT MACHINE MP3/Stream
• Go to THE SOFT MACHINE page for videos, full discography with ratings, reviews and much more
• Go to Live 1970 page for more details, where to buy and ratings/reviews
• Search the Forum for THE SOFT MACHINE related discussions