Soft Machine - Third (Vinyl, Repress) (1970) [24bit/96kHz]

Third is the third studio album by the rock band Soft Machine, originally released in 1970 as a double LP, with each side of the original vinyl consisting of a single, long composition.

Third marks the most major of Soft Machine's several shifts in musical genre over their career, completing their transition from psychedelic music to jazz, and is a significant milestone of the Canterbury scene, featuring interplay between the band's personnel: Mike Ratledge on keyboards, Robert Wyatt on drums, Hugh Hopper on bass and newest member Elton Dean on saxophone.

Lyn Dobson appears on saxophone and flute on "Facelift", recorded while he was a full member of the band (then a quintet), although he is credited as an additional performer. Jimmy Hastings (brother of Pye Hastings from Caravan) makes substantial contributions on flute and clarinet on "Slightly All the Time", free-jazz violinist Rab Spall (then a bandmate of Wyatt's in the part-time ensemble Amazing Band) is heard on the coda to "Moon in June", and Nick Evans (a member of the band during its short-lived septet incarnation) makes brief appearances on trombone in "Slightly All the Time" and "Out-Bloody-Rageous".

In the Q & Mojo Classic Special Edition Pink Floyd & The Story of Prog Rock (2005), the album came #20 in its list of "40 Cosmic Rock Albums".

AllMusic Review by Peter Kurtz [-]
Soft Machine plunged deeper into jazz and contemporary electronic music on this pivotal release, which incited The Village Voice to call it a milestone achievement when it was released. It's a double album of stunning music, with each side devoted to one composition – two by Mike Ratledge, and one each by Hopper and Wyatt, with substantial help from a number of backup musicians, including Canterbury mainstays Elton Dean and Jimmy Hastings. The Ratledge songs come closest to fusion jazz, although this is fusion laced with tape loop effects and hypnotic, repetitive keyboard patterns. Hugh Hopper's "Facelift" recalls "21st Century Schizoid Man" by King Crimson, although it's more complex, with several quite dissimilar sections. The pulsing rhythms, chaotic horn and keyboard sounds, and dark drones on "Facelift" predate some of what Hopper did as a solo artist later (this song was actually culled from two live performances in 1970). On his capricious composition "Moon in June," Robert Wyatt draws on musical ideas from early 1967 demos done with producer Giorgio Gomelsky. Lyrically, it's a satirical alternative to the pretension displayed by a lot of rock writing of the era, and combined with the Softs' exotic instrumentation, it makes for quite a listen (the compilation Triple Echo includes a BBC broadcast recording of "Moon in June" with different albeit equally fanciful lyrics, and the Robert Wyatt archival collection '68, released by Cuneiform in 2013, features a remastered version of Wyatt's original demo of the song, recorded in the U.S. following the Softs' tour opening for the Jimi Hendrix Experience). Not exactly rock, Third nonetheless pushed the boundaries of rock into areas previously unexplored, and it managed to do so without sounding self-indulgent. A better introduction to the group is either of the first two records, but once introduced, this is the place to go.

Tracklist:
A – Facelift
B – Slightly All The Time
C – Moon In June
D – Out-Bloody-Rageous



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