Assuming you're reading this becasue you are a prog-rock aficionados, I recommend this 4-LP release and Robert Wyatt is the reason why.

 

Here you can hear Wyatt at 100% of his drumming ability, right before the accident that paralysed his legs. And from the music (!!!) we can gather what the audience (accordingly to the press release) perceived from the glances thrown at each other by the protagonists. In plain words, A WAR was being fought between Wyatt and keyboardist Mike Ratledge.

 

This album explains it perfectly. Ratledge (with pieces from "Third", the just released "Fourth" and All White and Pigling Band from the future "Fifth") imagined Soft Machine as a band playing mostly written material, with a clean, 'proper' sound and relatively little improvisation.

 

Wyatt, on the other hand, the opposite. You can hear him here as furious as a lion in a cage: whenever he can, he "goes tom toms all the way" - as it happens under the melody in Pigling Bland - and uses his snare drum to generate literal 'parallel sound environments' in open clash with Ratledge's (such is the case - for instance - in Teeth.)

 

And, if you have an ear for these things, the internal war may even offer funny moments, which made me laugh out loud: as it is the case when Ratledge cuts Wyatt's drum solo short due to the (drumming) noise that Wyatt had previously created underneath Ratledge's solo.

 

I could easily imagine the arguments in the dressing room after a gig like this.

 

While Ratledge appears to be unable to stand Wyatt's sonic "joy de vivre," Wyatt's creativity here thrives. In fact he was soon to create Matching Mole and had just started a great (albeit commercially not so succesful) solo career, with the historic "End Of An Ear".

 

In this fateful night, Robert vastly contributes to expand the Soft Machine soundscape with his "Ratledge non-compliant" drum grooves, still sounding fresh after half a Century and so... diverse! His groovy drumming at Høvikodden's provides us one more serious reason to befriend Wyatt's aural companionship.

 

A "must" for any prog-rock and/or Wyatt lovers.

 

 

(...)