Original Album Classics Third/F Ourth/Fifth/Six/Seven

lots of Good Proper Fair Reviews. i was already a Soft Machine deadicated fan... when Thirds came out on vynil !! wow: i got the vynils inmediatelly upon USA release. i am lucky that waynow: say you Also have all the original albums ? ,> get this !! and so : you Also got the CDs ? indivudually ? > Get This ! not for in-car spin. this tremendous moody brainy music has Silences between notes which are Key to get your neurons reconnecting and expanding remember two of these albums are Double Albums. play each one Repeatedly before going on to the next one - there is both an Original SM genetic, and a progression. so thinking about giving it to some lucky youngster ? good for both of you - but then order Two: you don' wanna take your "present" back from the poor kid. go slowly: examp on Third 'facelift' i hear different mixes: friends on horns are clearer! more live on concert feel ( say Where is the rest of that/those concerts‽ ) yep: No data: no dates no times no listed musicians no engineers no data At All. slippery pretty box lists 3 sites for data... Ø. go to Wikipedia. i have played 3 CDs in order for Days i shall try to get back here. jgl

Soft Machine 3 was pretty heady stuff for a high school kid wearing headphones and smoking pot in his bedroom. While the rest of my schoolmates were getting into Grand Funk Railroad and Carly Simon, my best friend and I were discovering King Crimson, Mahavishnu Orchestra, Pink Floyd, Hatfield and the North and Soft Machine. Not that we didn't like AM radio stuff, but we were into "expanding" our consciousness as much as possible. Soft Machine 3 and the subsequent albums were milestones for us. Nothing else in all of music sounded like Mike Ratledge's staccato fuzz piano, except for perhaps Dave Stewart's fuzz piano in Egg and Hatfield or Dave Sinclair's fuzz piano in Caravan.Listening to Soft Machine also got us into "real" jazz, such as John Coltrane and Pharoah Sanders. We were then listening to what our heroes were influenced by, and eventually we made little distinction between the generations of jazz musicians. They were all great. Soft Machine 3 was played side by side with A Love Supreme.Aside from the fantastic music that the Mike Ratledge era of Soft Machine produced, I will always be grateful to them for opening up a whole new world of music to me. This box set is a fantastic way to get into this great band.

This product is a 5 CD set with Soft Machine's Third, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, & Seventh albums all packaged in a tight 5" x 5" x 1/2" main cover. Each CD comes with its own inner cover with the basic cover art but no information. The only way to tell what is going to play next is by the back main cover which has a list of the songs but no information on the musician line ups or years that they were recorded. The recordings sound rather compressed & harsh. I never heard the originals on LPs therefore I don't know "How" they should sound. I do have Soft Machine's later recordings of "Bundles", "Soft", & "Alive & Well" on Import LPs that I bought in the mid-1970s. They sound far superior, but the music is not as experimental as these 5 earlier recordings. The later music also has more guitar solos with less woodwinds. Soft Machine is a "Which came First the Chicken or the Egg Paradox": There was already Minimal Classical music as in Terry Riley, Phillip Glass, & Steve Reich in the mid 1960's. Therefore even classical music was experimenting with rhythms & tape loops. Miles Davis was transferring from acoustic Jazz to electric Jazz Rock as well as the Beatles making edited experiments with their Sargent Pepper LP. The Doors sort of entered into Jazz within a certain sound frame work & then we have Soft Machine; an Avant Guard Rock-N-Roll band turned into Jazz Fusion. Too much was happening during the late 1960s to early 1970s that it's hard to tell who was influencing who. What a contrast with today's music that is manufactured & packaged in Buddle-Gum, Country, Gothic or Rap fashion limitations. You're going to hear some Post-Bop to Experimental Fusion, to some near John Cage noise with these 5 CDs. A lot of the other reviewers are comparing Soft Machine to some Progressive Rock groups but I don't hear enough Classical elements to make the same conclusion. In other words Soft Machine took a different path then ELP, Genesis, & Yes. Soft Machine sounds more like SuperSister, a Dutch Progressive Rock err Jazz influence group of the early 1970s & later with just a hint of Weather Report. If you already have some of these recordings, buy the remainder separately to get more information & maybe a better recording. May I suggest to buy this CD set only if you want a fast, easy, & cheap way of getting the basics of Jazz Fusion from Soft Machine. A 4 is given for the lack of information & what maybe harsh recordings.This Review has started me to think about separating Progressive Rock from Jazz Fusion. SuperSister & Soft Machine were in between these 2 categories. I classify Progressive Rock as story telling in Classical music with a Rock Beat while Jazz Fusion containing more Jazz improv with almost no story telling.

Since I was wee bit of a boy collecting music, I have always looked for music that challenged my senses in one form or another. My search out weighs my funds often times, therefore the choice to purchase The Original Album Classics was one of my best finds. The collection finds the band at a time where the original incarnation is evolving and transforming into a free for all rock fusion, progressive, jazz influenced monster. I find the collection intoxicating and mind numbing when played a high volumes (over loud speakers, not ear buds). The band started out as a psychedelic outfit sharing bills with Pink Floyd and Tangerine Dream and the like while transforming in similar fashion from strange psychedelic pop into heavy duty progressive music which taps into the brain. If you like jam bands or improvisational rock/jazz fusion like Miles Davis (68- - 72') or the Mahavishnu Orchestra this collection will knock your socks off. I have listened to these recordings over and over and over for the past two months. Stunning and completely enjoyable.

Rock psicodélico de primeira qualidade.

No puede faltar en una colección de música.

Spumeggiante

GREAT STUFF,TWO OF THESE 5 WERE ORIGINALLY DOUBLE ALBUMS REISSUED HERE ON 1 CD EACH.SHAME NO TITLES PRINTED ON EITHER CDs OR THE COVERs,JUST TRACKS LISTED ON THE BACK OF THE BOX.

Sehr gute Musik. Jazz Rock Klassiker