Soft Machine

Ronnie Scott’s 10^th April 2024

This review first appeared in the Camden New Journal

My wife suggested that a vanishingly small number of readers would appreciate the headline to this piece. So, here goes – it is a play on a track called Dedicated To You.. But You Weren’t Listening on Soft Machine Volume Two (also used for the title of an album by the Keith Tippet Group, which featured Softs men Elton Dean and Robert Wyatt). It came to mind because guitarist John Etheridge of this parish (you may see him crossing the Heath most days), and the de facto frontman of the current Softs line-up, dedicated the band’s performance on Wednesday night to long-term, masterly drummer John Marshall, who played his final gig at Ronnie’s last year with the band and died in September 2023. Marshall wasn’t actually on Volume Two or the Tippett album but the latter in particular is a masterpiece of the kind of jazz-rock that Marshall excelled at.

         The latest iteration of the Softs (above, pic by P Howitt) played the first show at Ronnie’s – 6.30-8pm -a slightly early slot for jazz. It was ”Just after nap time” as Etheridge, who joined the band in 1975, making him the elder statesmen, put it. Whether he had partaken of a snooze himself wasn’t clear, but something put fire in his belly, because he was on blistering form, whether trading licks with the versatile sax/flute/keys man Theo Travis, indulging in a McLaughlin/Cobham like interplay with drummer Asaf Sirkis or turning out fiery finger-shredding solos on former member (Sir) Karl Jenkins’ Tales of Taliesin from the ninth album Softs.

         With no original personnel left, there are those who think the group is like Trigger’s famous broom in Only Fools and Horses – if all the parts have been replaced, is it still the same brush? In this case, though, the better analogy would be something like the Porsche 911 that has evolved over time into a new, yet familiar, beast. Hardly any components remain from the original in the current 911 model, yet the DNA they share is obvious. Soft Machine began in 1966 but the 2024 version has a similar genetic connection to the original.

       Etheridge went to great lengths to explain how the new boys – drummer Sirkis with his five crash cymbals and bass player Fred Baker  – slot into the history of the band, although a hand-out of a Pete Frame-like family tree would certainly help beginners to the Canterbury scene. Baker, incidentally, may look like he’ll be off to sell shooms at Glastonbury, but he demonstrated that he and his fretless bass are worthy (farm) successors to Hugh Hopper and Roy Babbington. The latter retired recently with hand problems, but he can be heard guesting on the excellent new record Other Doors, which has all the knotty time signatures, ethereal soundscapes and earworm melodies that any long-term fan could desire.

         The set was a canny mix of old and new, going back to the sixties for Joy of a Toy – also revisited on Other Doors – and taking in the seminal Third with Facelift and ranging from the abstract and angular (Travis’s The Visitor at the Window) to the serenely beautiful (a flute-driven version of Hopper’s Kings & Queens from Fourth – the flute harks back to the days when the enigmatic Lyn Dobson was a short-lived addition to the “classic” Dean/Hopper/Ratledge/Wyatt line-up). Odd that the new single wasn’t featured. It’s a proper 7-inch 45 rpm number with Harry Becket’s lilting The Dew at Dawn backed with a reworking of that old Mike Ratledge-era favourite, Slightly All the Time. Still, it was for sale in the foyer for those who missed it being included.

         The evening finished with a medley that spanned decades, where the multi-talented Travis let rip a la Elton Dean, beginning with 10.30 Returns to the Bedroom, the final track on Soft Machine Volume Two, and climaxing with a furious Hazard Profile Part One from the Bundles album. The full house loved it and, as on the new album, the band demonstrated this music, rather than being an exercise in prog-rock nostalgia, still has a winning vitality and relevance. Ronnie’s is closing for a refurb over the summer – let’s hope they invite Soft Machine back to the spiffed-up club, perhaps this time in the later slot, not just after nap time.

Rob Ryan

There is a horrible neologism that I came across in a newspaper recently. In the article the term “premiumisation” was applied to scotch whiskey – it describes the process of rebranding/hyping a product to make it “investible” and “collectable”. Something very similar is happening in the world of jazz, specifically in the world of LPs. It began with coloured vinyl editions, which are nearly always promoted as limited, collectable and attract a few quid extra over and above their monochrome siblings. I fell for this for a while – I have clear, yellow, red, orange, blue and even camouflaged discs. I stopped going colour-crazy when a record company executive assured me that adding pigment can affect sound quality and longevity of the album.

       The other route to “premiumisation” is the re-mastered special edition. This is spiralling to quite frightening heights – there was a recent version of Miles Davis’s Kind of Blue, announced with typical fervour: Definitive handmade limited run reissue Ultra High Quality Record! 33 1/3 RPM LP release limited to 25,000 copies. Mastered directly from the original 3-Track master tapes by Bernie Grundman. Pressed at Quality Record Pressings using Clarity Vinyl® on a manual Finebilt press. Cost for all this? Around £150. I’m sure it’s a wonderful artefact but I already have six versions of that record, including one on cassette. I surprised myself by resisting it.

       Less eye-wateringly expensive is the Blue Note Tone Poet series, supervised by Joe “Tone Poet” Harley, and put out to celebrate 80 years of the label. These are  “all-analogue, mastered-from-the-original-master-tape 180g audiophile vinyl reissues in deluxe gatefold packaging. Mastered by Kevin Gray (Cohearent Audio) and vinyl manufactured at Record Technology Incorporated (RTI)” . The latter is considered one of the best pressing plants in the world. Artists getting the Tone Poet treatment include Herbie Hancock, Grant Green, Lee Morgan, Wayne Shorter, Dexter Gordon and many others.

       Again, they are beautifully done, but are they worth the £10 premium they attract (they usually retail at £31-34) over a regular LP? After all, over the years I have been seduced by claims of superior sound quality by Japanese-only Blue Note editions (or maybe it was the obi strip – that band of paper that wraps around the cover) and “Cadre Rouge Audiophile” featuring Direct Metal Mastering and French pressing. Do I need more tweaks?

       One of the most recent batches of Tone Poets included McCoy Tyner’s splendid Expansions, which features the great Woody Shaw on trumpet, Wayne Shorter on tenor, Gary Bartz on alto and, unusually, clarinet, and bassist Ron Carter on an unexpected cello. It encompasses fast and furious modal jazz with the septet firing on all cylinders, Matthew Halsall-like Far Eastern tones and a piano/cello ballad. It was indeed an expansion of Tyner’s regular soundscape. I happen to have a 75^th Anniversary re-issue of this, so I bought a Tone Poet one to compare and contrast.

       I don’t have a particularly high-end audio system. At its heart is a vintage Quad and 1970s Japanese Micro-Seiki deck with SME arm which is maintained by Audio Gold in Crouch End (it was where I  traded a still-boxed CD player for it years ago, back when you couldn’t give record decks away). So not audiophile perhaps, but I do know its sound very well and thought I should be able to detect any differences/improvements in the new pressing.

       And I could. A more sonorous piano here, a richer woodier bass sound there, crisper horns in one or two places. But, I realised, paying such close attention and constantly repeating sections not only gave me a headache, but it also spoiled my enjoyment. I was like one of those oenophiles who can wax lyrical about the component parts of a wine without pausing to enjoy the whole (the same is true of some coffee drinkers I know).  I’m assured that the superior quality is best appreciated through headphones, but as that isn’t how I like to consume music, it’s a moot point. So, would I rush out to replace an album I already had with a Tone Poet version? No, probably not. But….

       And it is quite an interesting “but”. One of the welcome aspects about these re-issues is that Mr Poet hasn’t gone for the big ticket albums. So, no Sidewinder by Lee Morgan, but the more obscure Cornbread, no Maiden Voyage by Herbie Hancock, but The Prisoner and so on. Also Joe Harley has embraced other labels that were or are now in the Blue Note stable. So for instance, I have a Tone Poet of Chick Corea’s Now He Sings, Now He Sobs, which was on the originally on the Stateside label, and a recent release, Katanga! by Curtis Amy and Dupree Bolton, which was on Pacific Jazz.

       The latter is a fascinating album, because it highlights just how brilliant a trumpeter Dupree Bolton was, blistering fast yet astonishing accurate, with a hairs-up-on-the-back-of the-neck high-speed stratospheric excursions and brilliant tone. Bolton only made two real appearances on disc (Katanga! and The Fox by Harold Land, also recommended), frequently disappearing into the fog of drug addiction and subsequently prison. There isn’t space here to tell his whole tragic story of wasted talent, but if you are interested seek out Granta 69 (“The Assassin”). It includes a piece about Bolton by Richard Williams called Gifted, which is as fine and as moving a piece of jazz writing as you’ll find.

            So, given the quality and heft of the physical record, the heavy card used for the covers and, sometimes, the inserts with essays (as with Katanga!), I certainly would buy a Tone Poet if it was an album new to me or I only had it on CD and wanted an actual LP. Forthcoming releases for 2021 include Lee Konitz and Gerry Mulligan, Wayne Shorter, Joe Pass, Stanley Turrentine, Sonny Red and  more Grant Green, all new to me. I’ve got my extra tenners ready.

TONE POET AUDIOPHILE VINYL REISSUE SERIES 2021-2022 LINE-UP