'68

This album is as close as you can get to real Robert Wyatt. This archival release shows some fascinating cuts from the master himself featuring the ultimate guitar god (you guessed it, Jimi Hendrix), Mike Ratledge and Hugh Hopper. Some of the tracks are quite sloppy-sounding, which gives the album a very "home brew" sort of feeling. Some of the tracks, namely well, everything besides "Moon In June" are songs only to be seen on this album. "Slow Walkin' Talk" is that track that features Hendrix on bass and magically, it immediately sounds like something that after a polish could appear on "Are You Experienced?". To me, the coolest thing about the album is a take on what would later become Soft Machine's proggiest song - a multimovement suite "Moon In June". Note that as the name suggests, this was recorded in the year of 1968 (when the group toured USA with Jimi Hendrix) when the piece was to be released two years later on "Third".

Overall, despite holding a strong archival and historical value, I feel like the album is not very enjoyable, because of the poor recording quality as well as the fact that these tracks were not previously released for a reason. However, this is highly recommended to any Canterbury collector and fan. 3 stars!