Customer Reviews

Third (Bonus CD)

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

one of the first scribblings i ever put out on amazon was a cry for somebody to remaster this great album. the original cd version had about as bad a sound quality to it that you can get. now that egregious error has been corrected. this masterpiece is finally available in a rich wonderful sound. and you even get liner notes and a bonus disc of a live performance done at a classic music festival broadcast on bbc 3 in 1970, the same year this album was recorded. soft machine took their name from a william burroughs novel, and nowhere else in their discography does that seem more appropriate than on this recording. the sounds here (which are an energetic fusion of avante-garde jazz and wildly creative rock) are completely iconoclastic in spirit, just as mr burroughs novels are in the world of literature. there is a pure vibrant joy of self-expression that blasts forth from this music. i can listen to it again and again and it always sounds new and fresh. soft machine made several excellent albums, but this is their best. a true masterpiece of cutting edge art.

While always a big fan of the first two Soft Machine albums (as well as the early recordings issued as 'Jet Propelled Photographs'), they started to lose me as the rock became jazz. Time moves on, however, and I am now fully in love with 'Third'! It grew on me over the years, but with this amazing new remaster, it now sits alongside those first two as an equal yet very different animal. 'Moon In June' is still the tops here featuring the genius of Robert Wyatt, while 'Out Bloody Rageous' is simply breathtaking. The sound on this re-issue is just fantastic--so clear and sharp! The bonus disc of BBC recordings is a wonderful addition and a very nice booklet too. Highly recommended!!

This is the best that Soft Machine's "Third" album has ever sounded on CD!!!This great import 2-CD set from Sony/BMG includes the landmark classic double album on Disc 1(all four classic side long compositions!) , And a bonus live concert Recorded At The Royal Albert Hall on Disc 2(originally released as "Live at the Proms on the Reckless label")!!! This release puts other CD editions of "Third" to shame!!! It sounds that good!!! For example,you can hear the sqeak of Robert Wyatt's bass drum petal on his composition "Moon In June" and Hugh Hopper's "Facelift" has much improved sonics,stuff like that!!! Every one of these side long classics sounds awesome!!! And the bonus live CD is the icing on the cake!!! Also includes a cool booklet full of great photos and detailed liner notes!!! The sound is much more fuller and full of detail,thanks 24-bit remastering from the original tapes!!! An awesome release!!! Two thumbs up!!! Way up!!! A+

More correctly, this review's title should be "This remaster is glorious." I've been a fan of The Soft Machine Vols. 1 & 2 for quite a while, and I've owned Third for over five years, but I never really "got" it until I purchased this recent remastered reissue. The sound is so much improved that it really transforms the album, giving the music a vitality that simply isn't there in the early 90's reissue. Listen to this reissue and you'll understand why this is the grandest statement that the Soft Machine would ever make, and one of the top albums ever produced by any of the prolific Canterbury bands.

How can this music be accurately described? It's tough--"jazz-rock" and "fusion" don't come close to doing this genre-cracking music justice, not to mention the undesirable connotations brought on by both terms. A listen to the instrumental sections of the Soft Machine's second album will give you a hint at where the band was going, but here the band stretches out into much more complex, wild, terrifying, manic, and otherworldly areas with their sounds and improvisation. Really, the opener--"Facelift"--sums it up the best. Mike Ratledge's liquid organ sounds fade into audibility, then are suddenly replaced by the most dissonant, audacious fuzz organ sounds ever produced. Sinister horns start to edge their way into the mix, and it's over 5 minutes into the song that the horns combine with the keyboard and bass to state the composition's main themes. On the older issue of this album, the sound is muddier--like you're listening to the band from the very back of a poorly-constructed hall, and everything sounds distant and alien. With the new mastering the instrumental separation is crisp and it's much more apparent (and easier to visualize) that the music is being made by just a few guys in a room, and it's all the more intimately foreboding for it! The band ominously states the piece's themes, shifts to another theme at a faster tempo (reminds me of a demonic twist on the Price is Right music), then gives way to some really tasty improvisation from Ratledge and Elton Dean, the sax player. "Facelift" was recorded live, and bristles with energy, but it's not devoid of studio manipulation--there's some pretty trippy looping (Hugh Hopper really dove into this later on his 1984 album, and some freaky backwards music as well.

Much of the rest of the album follows a similar blueprint that "Facelift" establishes--the songs are all at least 18 minutes long and feature some pretty wild improvisation and dark textures and moods, but they're not devoid of the quirks and sense of humor we all expect from the Soft Machine and the Canterbury scene. "Slightly All The Time" kicks of with some winding bass from Hopper and similar grand statements featuring horn/organ harmonies, though it's a bit less scary than "Facelift." The backbone of the composition is hypnotic electric vamps from Ratledge that shift dramatically over different tempos (dig Robert Wyatt's typically incredible drumming throughout), laying a backdrop for some good flute soloing.

Fans of Wyatt and earlier Soft Machine will be pleased with "Moon In June," the last Soft Machine track to feature Robert Wyatt's vocals and witty lyrics. It's a far cry from earlier work, though, as it's dreamy, meandering and not pop oriented at all. The lyrics are hilarious throwaways, though, and Wyatt turns in some mouth-watering drumming and some psychedelic percussive improvisation along with a violin toward the end (which predicts some of his later solo work on Rock Bottom. "Slightly All The Time" closes the album with some really incredible delay/loop keyboards and segues into some more blisteringly fast horn/bass theme statements, passes over some more jaw-dropping tempo shifts and sick instrumental interplay, then fades back out over three minutes of similar keyboard loops.

Overall, Third is completely one-of-a-kind. It manages to combine memorable songwriting and melodies with engaging instrumental prowess in a way unmatched elsewhere by Soft Machine or really any other jazz-rock music, which often tends to be virtuosic to the point of inaccessibility and distinctly lacking in memorable melody. Better yet, the band's decision to produce an album of side-long suites gives them room to stretch out into some really transcendent and psychedelic sounds. The icing on the cake is that there's a second disc in this reissue that includes a live performance of half of this album and a medley of material from Soft Machine Two. The production isn't as clean as the live "Facelift" from the original album, but the playing and sense of experience is impressive--I'm sure Soft Machine were really a band best experienced live. If my words didn't do this album justice, I'm not surprised, hearing this music is believing. Hopefully I at least inspired you to go out and pick this up--make sure to get the new 2-disc remastered reissue.

This release by Soft Machine is simply the best the many-membered band ever did. It is the zenith of their creativity, verve and execution. This line-up - with drummer, vocalist extraordaire Robert Wyatt, the late saxophone god Elton Dean, multi-keyboard legend Mike Ratledge and the mighty monster of the fuzz bass Hugh Hopper produced some of the most imaginative, melody-laden, downright breathtaking compositions all driven by the compelling rhythm section of Hopper/Wyatt. The band never sounded more experimental, unforgettable and soulful than they did on this album. This particular release is further enhanced by the inclusion of a second disc - the live recording done at their famous Proms appearance. It is noticeably enhanced by a far better EQ than the original Reckless Records CD of some ten years or more ago.

A must-own for any true fan of not only Soft Machine BUT of the entire genre of Progressive Jazz Rock which they helped create.

On this day in 1970, I was at home eagerly awaiting The Proms broadcast. Radio Times had published a large article about the first appearance at The Proms of a "pop group" - some pop group! The show was only 40 minutes long - but it was an eye opener. For years, I kept the reel-to-reel mono tape that I made that day. It was tranferred to cassette, later CDR, then MP3 - and suddenly a chance Google search revealed a reissue on CD.

I do not need to repeat all the comments about how great The Softs were - others have already made that point. I bought Third on vinyl soon after hearing the broadcast. It is still a great album - but I must confess that I find the BBC Proms versions "better", whatever that means. Obviously, this is a result of hearing them over and over before I bought the vinyl. As a result, I used to play the album tracks "Slightly All The Time" and "Moon In June" all the time - and then dig out The Proms tape for "Facelift" and "Out-Bloody-Rageous".

No doubt, most people will prefer the vinyl versions - but at least with this CD you get to hear them both. The sound is excellent - and The Proms concert sounds so much better than what I have been living with for over 40 years. Enjoy!

I had been at a musical festival when I first heard these guys but we all know that doesn't necessarily translate into enjoying their studio albums.....I did and still do. I NEVER would have thought I would enjoy music that did not have a guitar but there you are! "Third" is innovative, melodic, intricate, and intriguing.

The reviews here so far are all for died-in-the-wool Softs fans, but how to explain, generate interest in, this short-lived lineup's music for someone who is just interested?

Well, it sounds like chaos, but is not. It's carefully arranged. And besides the instruments, the Robert Wyatt lyrics are just too delicious.

And it's not chaos: On the first track, Facelift, at exactly 7:03 in, the general, gorgeous, introductory noise suddenly switches to horns that sound exactly like REALLY horny drakes fighting over a girl-duck, suffused and entirely surrounded by Mike Ratlege's insane organ, and all of that given substance by Robert Wyatt's inventivated drumming, working along beneath them. (Inventivated isn't a word, you say? Listen to his drumming before you say that.)

It sounds like brilliant chaos interspersed with moments of magical cohesion, but these pieces were carefully rehearsed, then laid out so that there was flexibility between the precisely-timed changes for the various dissident, dissonant (and warring) partners to have their individual jollies with the piece. Listen to "Moon in June", which is my favourite track (I don't mean my favourite track on the album: I mean my favourite single piece of music), and wait for the change at precisely 13:50 in, when five minutes of discordant war utterly sweeten, and suddenly the ENTIRE piece makes sense.

"But even on the live tracks, they're doing things that are not possible. How is that possible?"

Well, I'm not sure, but they fer shure took the tapes and ... worked on them, sometimes running them backwards for effect. Deal with it.

There is preciously-little recorded material of Soft Machine in their prime, and this is the MOTHERLODE. If my house was firebombed, I would of course grab my son first (unless he'd really, REALLY annoyed me that day) and grab this album second.

It's rare that an instrumental work can so tug at the emotions while simultaneously mesmerizing the mind and ears. So far ahead of its time, "Third" has so many beautiful layers and sonic textures. Soft Machine is the thinking-man's distinctively European jazz. But the true masterpiece track of the entire LP is "Outbloodyrageous!" If Ratledge had never composed another track, he should rightfully be famous for this one alone. Amazingly, it manages to evoke a futuristic feel while almost simultaneously evoking wistful visions on the past - or perhaps that's just what it does for me, and yet I've been listening to it for nearly 35 years now. I describe the experience of "Outbloody" as being much like those who have seen key events in their lives flash by in an instant. Well, maybe I'm just the imaginative sort, but stoking the imagination is what great music does, and is what "Third" excels at throughout.

Soft Machine Third is not quite the whimsey-fest of Volumes One & Two. But when released in 1970, the Village Voice called it the "best album of all time."

That's impossible to prove or disprove. But the double set was on of the first to thrust serious fusion on to rock, from the multi-part suite of Hugh Hopper's "Facelift," to the melodic, "Out Bloody Rageous" by Mike Ratlege, who also wrote the hooky riff of "Slightly All The Time."

Each track was a side long, and the fouth was Robert Wyatt's "Moon In June." Here the band kicked back to the beat poetry improvisations of the first two albums. Wyatt is in even sharper form than usual, finding his verse as he moves through the piece. It is an epic college of poetry, jazz, fuzz and electronics. Never had popular music felt so ambitious.

"Moon In June" was the last of its kind, as, I would say unforntunately, the Softs moved in a more serious jazz fusion direction after Third, and after one more album, Fourth, Wyatt was gone.

Who knows what the best album of all time was, but given the sweep of Third there is hardly a better one.