Customer Reviews

Facelift

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This release is truly only for fans of Soft Machine who have their other available concert material already. The sound quality rates only one star, although the performance itself would rate five stars. The person who recorded this concert (Brian Hopper) claims that you'll hear the concert as it was for a member of the audience. Given that Brian's brother Hugh has said that the goal of each band member during this time was to play louder than the others, the muddy distorted sound may indeed be close to what the audience actually heard. Again, the performance is great, but start with Backwards, Noisette, or Virtually if you haven't heard those yet.

You can't fault the performance on this album and this is considered by many to be one of the best Soft Machine line-ups.
Unfortunately, this concert was recorded by Hugh Hopper's brother with a portable tape-recorder and the sound quality on this release is atrocious. The drums are inaudible, there's noisy hiss all over the recording and to top it off, there are speed problems with the recording resulting in a jangly sound in a lot of places. This is definitely a 'completists only'-release.

Yes... the sound is very dated... what do you get with a hand-held tape recorder in 1970... tapes speed fluxs and all the worts... well... that being said you can guess quality of sonics but not the performance. The performance is fantastic and it takes my bootleg weary ears to tell. Buy at your own risk but how can I say don't... it's Soft Machine!

I almost didn't buy this, after reading the disparaging reviews. I was only persuaded by the fact that it of a 1970 concert, and I didn't already have it. I had it on my "must buy next" list for a year before I decided I was willing to throw away money on a chance.

When it arrived, I put the first disc in the player and listened to the first minute or so. At that point I hit the "stop" button before I broke down and cried. This was awful. It sounded as though Brian Hopper was turning the tape reels by hand. I've heard better on tapes that have previously been caught and mutilated on the spindle.

After a day or two, though, I figured I'd see if perhaps that was indeed sort-of what had happened: that Brian Hopper was still setting up the machine during the first couple of minutes of the recording. Maybe the rest was fine.

And it was. I can hardly express how fine the rest is.

The recording is actually remarkably good. Far better than most bootleg audience recordings from around that time. The sound spectrum is fairly wide, the tape hiss is not intrusive, and the distortion is minimal (and given how loud Soft Machine played, that's impressive right there).

And the music is unbelievably good. The performance is very distinctive and fresh. If you've heard 8 different versions of any of these tracks, this 9th version will make you sit up and pay attention like you did the first time.

This is not an album you should use to try to impress anyone who is not familiar with Soft Machine. Or anyone who has never heard an amateur recording before and thinks all recorded music is 20-20. But if you have a serious liking for Soft Machine of this period, the idea is that you really ought to buy this one just to impress yourself.