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

 

Here you can listen to 100% of what Wyatt with his drumming ability had to offer, 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 irate glances thrown between Wyatt and keyboardist Mike Ratledge, angered at each other. A WAR was being fought .

 

This album explains it perfectly. Ratledge (with tunes from "Third", the just-released "Fourth" and All White and Pigling Band from the soon-to-come "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: as soon as he can, he goes "tom tom" all the way - as it happens under the melody in Pigling Bland, while using his snare drum to generate literal 'parallel sound environments' in flattening clash with Ratledge's (such is the case - for instance - in Teeth.)

 

If you have an ear for these things, this inner war offers funny moments, good enough for LOL: this is the case when Ratledge cuts Wyatt's drum solo short due to the (drumming) noise that Wyatt had just 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.

 

 

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