| The
Review |
This CD marks the first release
of a live performance by Soft Machine's Bundles line-up featuring
Allan Holdsworth on guitar. This concert, recorded for Radio
Bremen in January 1975, consists of most of the Bundles material,
which hadn't yet come out although in the can since the previous
summer, plus a couple of band improvs and solo showcases for
Mike Ratledge, Roy Babbington and John Marshall. That era
of Soft Machine was unique in that, taking the band's long
established tradition of continuous change to an extreme,
when Holdsworth joined all the previous repertoire was abandoned,
literally at once, in favour of brand new material written
by Karl Jenkins and, to a lesser extent, Mike Ratledge. This
made the new Soft Machine even more difficult to compare with
its predecessors, and gave the band a well-deserved chance
for critical reappraisal. At long last, reviewers stopped
bemoaning the loss of the band's father figures to judge the
new line-up on its own merits. As a consequence, positive
reviews again began to pour in, and 1974-75 was to prove Soft
Machine's second golden age in many respects.
"By the release of Bundles in 1975,
Mike Ratledge was Soft Machine's only original member. With
relative newcomer Karl Jenkins, with his increasingly dominant
compositional role, there was little tying them to the classic
line-up that released albums like Third. But it was guitarist
Allan Holdsworth, appearing virtually out of nowhere with
a revolutionary melodic and harmonic approach--who placed
this Softs incarnation on equal footing with earlier line-ups.
Recorded for German Radio Bremen months before Bundles was
released, Floating World Live is a powerful live performance
that, despite Holdsworth's dominating presence, provides plenty
of space for all - proof that they were far looser and interactive
in concert than Bundles suggests. An exciting 75-minute set,
Floating World Live demonstrates just how well-formed Holdsworth
was this early in his career, and proves that critics writing
this incarnation off as nothing more than riff-heavy fusion
couldn,t be more mistaken. " JOHN KELMAN (Senior Editor AllAboutJazz.com)
Classic Allan Holdsworth, in one
of his best ever performances ever, monster bass and fuzz-bass
lines by Roy Babbington, psycho analog synths and an incredible
polyrhythmic drumming by John Marshall! Think of a jazz-rock
jam band excuting killer riffs, atop attractive Canterbury-style
overtones...Soft Machine fans will rejoice!
GLENN ASTARITA (contributor to Downbeat,
Radio Direct X, JazzReview.com & E-Jazz Times)
|
