LIVE IN ZAANDAM

Recorded on May 10th in Holland, this album does not really have the right to just Soft Machine simply because the rights to the name, however historically important the members playing on this album are. Enough nit-picking, as I was sorry not to have heard about this gig being at reasonable driving distance from my work. Another point about this album, although it deserves to be in the SM galaxy is that the music is not that representative of what they played in their glory years. Sure Dean, Marshall and Hopper were around the key mid-era Machine, but only Marshall was still around when Etheridge joined the Machine for three albums starting with Softs. And since there was no guitarists around the older albums, this might be the prime reason why the listener will not really click at the music on this Cd as (if memory serves me well) there is only one track from a historical album - Kings and Queens from 4 and there are two Etheridge-penned tracks on the tracks presented on this album. And the general sound is jazzier than any of their previous records, be they historical or posthumous releases.

Not quite as essential as the Cuneiform releases of late, but Musea still released an interesting album.