MoonJune 2008 / 2025
Laid down on German stage in November 1971, a unique image of least-documented line-up in the British experimentalists’ history tells an unhinged-arrangements story.
Drop
Five months. This quartet lasted only five months, yet that seemed enough to unseal the endless possibilities the Canterbury legends were possessed of. Or, rather, possessed by, for there’s something demonic about the foursome who tore up the ensemble’s rulebook and made their framework so loose as to see even familiar melodic pictures fall out of it. After Robert Wyatt had left the fold due to his fragile-tunes ideas being rejected, Elton Dean brought in his JUST US colleague Phil Howard to handle drums and help shatter compositional structures Mike Ratledge and Hugh Hopper used to craft carefully to steer SOFT MACHINE towards fusion. The outcome of such a shift would land on the band’s “Fifth” in a somewhat restrained fashion, but while the album’s material was taking form in concert environment free jazz reigned supreme even on a couple of barely recognizable familiar pieces,
Not that this combo let the audience indulge in following what they heard on the collective’s studio efforts, with Ratledge and Dean taking turns on Fender Rhodes and extending “Out-Bloody-Rageous” and “Slightly All the Time” – both improvs more concise, if significantly, in a reticent English way, wilder than on “Third” – to a few deliciously otherworldly dimensions. No, what the listeners are offered from the beginning doesn’t allow for any weakness on their part. “Neo Caliban Grides” – which would soon end up on Dean’s self-titled solo debut – opens the proceedings via a mad tangle of his brass passages and Howard’s tempo-flouting, yet strangely arresting, groove the bass and piano notes struggle, in a cinematic manner, to accentuate and then push into shape. It will segue into the also-fresh “All White” where ivories float to the front and the rest of the instruments engage in an enchanting interplay, with sax going off on a tangent to keep the crowd focused, but a cut titled “Drop” dissolves the previously dense dynamics to present sparse, though still spaced-out, balladry nobody associated the group with and then spice up the drift with cosmic funk.
Much briefer, “M C” may see the musicians pursue amorphic rapture, and “As If” may bring forth some adventurous brooding, as Hugh’s quiet thunder and Elton’s subdued lightning highlight Mike’s stormy swirls and Phil’s reefs, yet it’s the under-three-minute coupling of beat extravaganza “Dark Swing” and the emotional splash of “Intropigling” that shows how trad the band could sound when they wanted to. Serving as a finale of this powerful performance, “Pigling Bland” ties everything together with a rocking approach, a precursor to the ensemble’s future endeavors; however, there would never be anything as fantastic as the mellifluous madness captured here.
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