Search - Soft Machine :: The Soft Machine - Volume Two

Wholly Subterrainian

vonXero | Tanelorn | 01/14/2006

(5 out of 5 stars)

"The Soft Machine was/remains so underground as to have been unearthed by only those most able to dig. I had never heard of them myself until I accidentally saw them in concert.



My best friend and I, together with his older brother who had a car, bought tickets to see the Jimi Hendrix Experience in 1968 - for $3.50! - and this band that none of us had ever heard of before came on stage first.



My tiny little mind was so blown that I was down at Stan's record shop the very next day looking for anything by the Soft Machine.



What I found was Volume Two.



Unlike anything I have ever heard before or since, this album remains one of my favorites nearly fourty years later. To say that the music is 'otherworldly' seems insufficient; an alternate reality hits closer to the mark.



Unlike the other reviewers whose critiques I have read on this page, I don't know the band's members or history or how to catagorize their style; I just know what I like and I like this album a LOT!"

Greatest album ever made

MSHARK | Texas | 06/24/2008

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This is it; the album I would take to a desert island. I've listened to this thing a million times since the day I bought the vinyl some 40 years ago. It literally changed my life. Dada music for the late 20th century; the band and the album that foreshadowed everything that was to come. They are to music -- what Tzara was to poetry and Duchamp was to art."

You really need to own this album, a totally great album!

BENJAMIN MILER | Veneta, Oregon | 07/11/2009

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Volume Two is Soft Machine's second album, released on the Probe label (distributed by ABC in America), and to me, the music is clearly an improvement on their debut! Kevin Ayers had left, with Hugh Hopper replacing him. This is perhaps one of the finest albums I have ever heard from 1969. Mike Ratledge provides us some great organ and piano work, and of course Robert Wyatt providing great drum work and some rather clever lyrics. This album really demonstrates the jazz background of these guys, and how they were able to show those influence in a psychedelic/early prog rock setting. This is a collection of mainly short pieces, some of them experimental, some of them proper "songs", plus Robert Wyatt reciting the British alphabet (that is, Z is "Zed"), and then doing it in reverse shortly after. There are the occasional experimental passage that gets me thinking of Krautrock groups, like early Tangerine Dream, Ash Ra Tempel, or Amon Duul II at their most experimental. Some of those jazzy pieces show you where the band would be headed for their Third album. Trying to pick out a highlight on this album is really difficult for me, for so many reasons, since the music changes rather fast. The great thing is the band never bores the listener for a moment here. To think that this came out a few months before King Crimson gave us In the Court of the Crimson King, this album really deserves mention as one of the albums that help start progressive rock in the first place. This is truly one of the highlights of the Canterbury scene, as far as I'm concerned. Certainly Third is thought of as their artistic high point, but you never want to miss Volume Two as you're really missing out on some great stuff, this album is totally essential!"