Interesting; from what I've seen and read, the majority seem to hype Third to death and hold everything else in lower regard. Hmn...

And anyways, I don't dislike their debut. On the contrary, I think it's quite awesome. I just prefer Second, Third, Fourth, etc. because it was on Second and Third that the group really established their sound as most of us know it, and its their jazzier-indulgences that I find to be the most enthralling IMO. :p:

Well you made it sound like the first was just meh...

You gotta love "Why am I so Short" and "So Boot if at All" right after. Musical heaven.

I'm giving this one hell of a bump.

Over the last year Soft Machine have become on of my favourite bands. Volume One, Volume Two and Third are all incredible albums, and A Certain Kind has to be one of my favourite songs ever.

Who wants a live video? Yeah? Sweet.



I fucking love Soft Machine.

i used to have third but i accidentally stepped on it and broke it

why would you fucking leave it on the floor?

it fell on the floor

Stu, since you like early Soft Machine so much, don't forget to check out Matching Mole if you haven't already. Robert Wyatt didn't like the purely instrumental jazz direction Soft Machine was headed in. Appearantly, Moon in June barely made it on to Third as most of the members weren't too keen on doing that kind of stuff (singing and stuff) at that point. Robert was pretty torn up about it all so when he left Soft Machine, he started a new band which was pretty much a continuation of the kind of stuff Robert liked doing in Soft Machine. Even the name was similar in a sense; the softs played a lot in France and Soft Machine in french is "Machine Molle" .. And Robert's new band was Matching Mole. ;)

Here's one of my favourite songs from their debut!



Note the brilliant lyrics :D Wonderful stuff!

I'm on it, will report back. That song is superb!

At the risk of going slightly off-topic by discussing more Matching Mole in the Soft Machine thread, that band also recorded the classic God Song :)

Tore I absolutely love this Matching Mole album, thanks for the rec.