ORIGINAL ALBUM CLASSICS

Normally, I rate Columbia's Original Album Classics series very highly, since - provided you don't mind getting fairly basic quality paper sleeves for the discs and absolutely no liner notes or booklets - they're a great way of collecting a big chunk of a band's discography all at once, and often they include albums which are otherwise hard to find on CD. However, whilst I do think the Soft Machine release - covering all their albums from Third to Seven - is a good one, there's some caveats I'll thrown in.

First off - and to be fair, this isn't really Columbia's fault - the selection of albums isn't what it could be. Columbia, of course, have to work with the albums they actually own the rights to, but that's a shame in this case because it means that neither of the band's first two albums are present, and thus a whole phase of the band's musical development is essentially missed out. Furthermore, it includes the band's transitional fourth and fifth albums, and though I have warmed to these I still consider them to be a little bit of a misstep compared both to what came before and what came after. The lack of the widely-respected Bundles will be especially felt by fusion fans.

Secondly, the recent remaster of Third, when bought separately, includes the Live at the Proms 1970 performance as a bonus disc - which isn't presented here. Consequently, if you really like the Robert Wyatt era of the band and want the Live at the Proms disc, you probably want to buy Third separately - at which point the value of the back goes down sharply, since Third is easily the best album here.