Customer Reviews

Third

5 star:		(34)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

The Soft Machine had come a long way from the band who was blissfully stoned on stage doing the 14 Hour Technicolour dream a few years earlier- indeed, founders Daevid Allen and Kevin Ayers were both gone (Allen founding Gong, and Ayers' amazing "Joy of a Toy" lp was the first of many successful lps that almost, many times, made Kevin the star he should of been- almost...), and now the trio began their metamorphasis into a tight unit.

"Third" is a landmark album in the Softs'canon. The full fledged sonic jazz attack was unlike anything they had ever done before- and it WORKED! Adding Elton Dean (formally of Bloos-ology with a then unknown Reg Dwight, who, partly in honor of Dean, changed his name to Elton John) added credibility in the British jazz circles, and helped to make the album a more cohesive work.

The lp is a tour-de-force for the Softs, showcasing Mike Ratledge's wonderful feel for jazz, and his signature Lowry organ stylings, Hugh Hopper's always rock solid fuzz drenched bass musings, and the God-given talents of Robert Wyatt on the skins. Wyatt also gets to sing on the wonderful "Moon in June," his voice unparalleled.

The results are pure ecstacy.

The lp will take a few listens to get the full effect of its greatness, but once you get it, you'll have it forever. I have owned this lp for 12 years now and it still amazes me like few albums can. THAT, my friends, is the benchmark for all great music!

So, I highly recommend "Third," in my opinion one of the 50 greatest lps of all time ever made.

I too bought this album in 1970, having been drooling in anticipation since Vol. Two. Imagine (if you will) my elation on finding that the Softs had not only secured a contract with a major (albeit notoriously cranky) label, but that they had released a double album to boot.

I guess the most accurate indication of my feelings about this album is that I still listen to it with some frequency thirty years later. And I own several thousand CDs (jazz, classical, pop), not counting the many cassettes and LPs. This album is decidedly something special. I would suggest that rock fans new to the Soft Machine begin with track (originally side) three -- Robert Wyatt's grand farewell. Jazzers would do better to begin with tracks two or four. As for side one -- Cuneiform has announced a release of the entire concert from which this is taken in January.

Third is commonly spoken of as the Soft Machine's masterpiece. I certainly thought so for quite awhile. But I have to agree with the Cambridge music fan below: sometime in the early eighties I began to realize that Volume Two is by far the more innovative, sophisticated, and just plain weird of the two; I'm still hearing things I never noticed in it before. I think it's generally underrated because it gives an initial impression of being lightly whimsical and twee (as the English say.) But after several listenings its musical merits tend to hit one smack in the face. And, truly rare in rock, the lyrics (with references to Jarry, Pynchon, and who knows what else) are quite good -- and the nonsense lyrics even better.

But back to Third. Buy it. It's certainly the most immediately accessible of the Softs's recordings, and something of a cultural milestone as well. (Though SM were largely ignored at the time, their current discography is well more than twice as large now as it was in the 1970s.)

This is one of my all time favorite albums, and you should make it one of yours as well. Mike Ratledges distorted Lowry Organ is a unique and amazing sound, along side Robert Wyatts insane, Jazzy Drums, and of course the flawless, incredible Bass playing of Hugh Hopper, and distinct style of Classical-Jazz horn playing by Elton Dean makes The Soft Machine absolutley incredible. "Moon in June' is not to be missed. If you've never heard it, just by this cd, throw on some headphones and slip away. I'm 15 and one of my favorite things to do is to listen to" Moon in June" on headphones, so trust me you'll like it. Life isn't much without this album, so augment your life with a little madness and buy it.

This was really the album that split the progressive camp into two or three divisions.

Soft Machine were contemporaries of Pink Floyd and Hendrix, yet Floyd acknowledged that the Softs were better musicians and Hendrix wanted them as his opening act.
This album hits the point at which the psychedelic camp decided to invert on itself (don't forget--this was released when Workingman's Dead came out) or go into longer more experimental pieces. Soft Machine (ahead of Miles Davis) decided to increase membership and go straight ahead into the music they loved when they were young--free jazz and other contemporary musics (like Terry Riley).

The thing that differentiated the Soft Machine from other "jazz-rock" groups was their willingness to experiment. They had incredible chops, but the band was (even with the brass section) much more egalitarian than say Chicago or Blood, Sweat and Tears. They were more virtuosic than Pink Floyd and even the Who or the Nice. So what do you do? You use all this power to create something totally unique.

I got Third at a time when Rolling Stone magazine still liked experimental music somewhat (long time readers will understand how long ago that was) and when Ratledge was touted as being the organ's answer to Frank Zappa. That was true; Ratledge's solos are outside and yet extremely logical and musical, much like Zappa's guitar solos. The fact that he chose an oddball keyboard to work with (Ratledge used a Lowrey organ, for pity's sake) didn't endear him to the masses, but he put out some damn interesting stuff. Wyatt's drumming had actually toned down by this album, but was still astonishing. And I had never heard such a monstrous sound coming out of a bass as Hugh Hopper wrought at that time.

The music ranges from extremely free form "Facelift" and "Moon In June" to structured, almost clockwork like pieces "Slightly All The Time" to devilishly complicated and energetic "Out-Bloody-Rageous". This is the last GREAT SofT Machine Album (and according to Ratledge, the last record he enjoyed making).

Still the music is extremely challenging; when I first got the album I was a bit put off by Wyatt's voice and the apparent complexity of some of the music; but it grew on me until I absolutely loved it(and believe me, I didn't get much support in that--I can remember a bunch of chemically-altered friends begging me to "turn that record off" during "Facelift" because it was freaking them out--this is one of my fondest college memories.). But in this album you can hear the roots of what almost every experimental group did later, from King Crimson to Univers Zero. It is that important and groundbreaking.

Oh well...get this and put it on...years of pleasure await you...
I am sorry Space Puppy didn't like this, by the way...

Gary Gomes

When you first pop this disc into your stereo, you most likely will not like it. Do not fret. I had to listen to it three times all the way through before I even began to like it. I got it four days ago and have not stopped listening to it since. It is quite possibly one of the greatest underrated albums of all-time! "Slightly All The Time", and "Moon In June" are my favorite songs, though all four are excellent. I strongly recommend

This is a jazz-fusion milestone, way ahead of its time. "Moon in June" is still, all these years later, a breath-taking feast of virtuoso musicianship and playfully amusing lyrics, mixing the avant-garde with Tin Pan Alley melody. The thing remains unparalleled, and it's perfect in all its messy glory.

Not being a jazz fan much beyond the guidance of the Bonzo Dog Band (Delicious hot, disgusting cold), Third provided an overwhelming and dislocating experience when it first appeared on my shelf. Having cut enormous slack to the Kevin Ayers incarnations, and having backtracked through painful effort to The Wilde Flowers, Third did to me what all art of the 20th century aimed to do: left me wondering about what had just happened. Not disorienting, but re-orienting.

I tended to cling to Moon in June. Yet, those other three tracks would not leave me alone. Between great servings of what was expected, I was continually drawn back to Third, long enough to convince me to buy Four and then look forward to Five and Hopper's 1984, some years later.

The truth is that, for a short time, Soft Machine managed a kind of accessible perfection, far from the later abstractions brought along by multiple and emphatically Brownian personnel changes. Third and Four provide a balanced set of music that is not wholly jazz, not wholly rock, not wholly anything other than what they most decidedly are. Which can only be described as singular and unique. Whether born of imitation or genuine inspiration or some hybrid, the one piece a side extravagance and diversity of Third seems unrepeatable, irreducible and still remarkable.

How can you ever find a way to thank these guys?

I couldn't resist finding out what other people said about this record before writing my review. I bought it originally in 1971 or so, having purchased the first Soft Machine albums from bargain bins, which is where I discovered a lot of offbeat stuff.

The customer reviews are great, so much fun to read. And everyone hits on some significant aspect of the recording, which, to start off with, is abso-fu**ing-lutely awful, as noted more civilly by another writer. Nevertheless, I do believe this is Soft Machine's masterpiece. I would love to hear the entire thing reproduced note for note with modern recording (well, there are a couple of awkward progressions in need of revision).

The first piece, Facelift, can be divided into a number of distinct parts. The extended introduction gives way to a strange march, a section that rocks, and then a spacey flute solo. The entire piece serves as an opening movement, an overture of sorts.

The second piece, Slightly All the Time, begins with a jazzy sax duet that is easy-going. This short introduction is followed by extended solos for sax, fresh, innovative, easlily listenable 30 years after its recording. Six minutes into the work, a rapid percussive background and electric piano accompany a section of flute solos. This is followed by soprano sax, electric keyboards, and a return to the original theme and the first spacey section, with light percussion and another dreamy sax improvisation and a final reprise of the opening melody. This second piece is closest to jazz and furthest from rock.

The third piece, Moon in June, as many have noted, is just fantastic, and has a super-heavy, trippy ending, with a mysterious bass roaring up from the lowest notes and super fuzzed-out electric violin. The falsetto vocals allow the group to heighten the heaviness of the music. The lyrics are the nostalgic and frankly sexual musings of a raw youth.

The disc ends with another lengthy, jazzy piece, a denouement after the climax reached during Moon in June. A sax dominated introduction leads, by way of another spaced-out bridge, to a bass-driven bluesy sax solo. The alto is joined by soprano sax which echos the chord progression being played by the piano. The effect of the repeated progression is hypnotic. This is certainly the music of Soft Machine that most closely approaches "lovely." There is a particularly wistful quality about Out-Bloody-Rageous.

I have not listened, since the seventies, to my other Soft Machine albums, having gone to CD and the records having been rendered unplayable in the meantime, but I recall them well and intend to visit that music again. Still, I know that this record went way beyond, in scale, what the group accomplished elsewhere. The overall effect, despite the sound quality, which can be forgiven if looked at as part of the fuzzed-out, spaced-out nature of the beast, is still impressive, exciting, making this a unique monument to jazz-rock fusion worth hearing.

There are quite a few reviews here that deal with the actual contents, musical influences and so forth of Third. What I would like to do is put more stress on the album's unrivaled quality.

I have been listening to this album a few times a week on average for thirty years (after a few years of listening to it at least two or three times every day), both as background music for working and as something you can focus on obsessively. Almost nothing I have ever heard gives me the pleasure that this album still does, and virtually nothing else has remained fresh and exciting for this long. I expect I'll still be listening to it on my deathbed, when everything else I listen to now is long gone and buried, and I don't expect to hear anything as good or better between now and then.

I first heard THIRD back in early 1970 on some obscure FM station while I was getting ready to go to VietNam. It was the most inventive album I had ever heard - and perhaps still is. The seques that are executed in 'Slightly All The Time' and 'Out-Bloody-Rageous' still make me quiver to this day. Needles to say, the vinal album THIRD was with me in VietNam, and I probable play the CD 2 or 3 times a month. It's too bad some of the live versions seem to miss the spark this one achieves. Thanks SM.