At this point in the band's history, Soft Machine's lineup might raise the question of Theseus' paradox: if all the pieces of something are replaced, bit by bit over time, does the identity of the original something still remain? On Softs, Mike Ratledge, the only original bandmember present on Bundles, the group's preceding Harvest LP, was relegated to guest status, contributing synthesizer to only two tracks, "Song of Aeolus" and "Ban-Ban Caliban." Otherwise, keyboard duties fell completely to Karl Jenkins, who joined the group prior to the recording of Six and had gradually taken over the conceptual reins as the Softs finished their tenure with Columbia and moved over to Harvest. On Softs more than ever before, Soft Machine was Jenkins' band; he composed fully seven of the LP's 11 tracks, making the album a vehicle for his own artistic conception. And yet, as Soft Machine albums go, this one is just fine, thank you. Jenkins had always put his own personal stamp on the material he wrote for the band, but he also retained elements of a Soft Machine style that emerged around the time Ratledge began penning LP side-long opuses on Third: a marriage of modalism and minimalism with memorable themes in layered counterpoint and an occasional backdrop of rippling, echoey overdubbed electric keyboards, giving the music a trippy, trance-inducing quality. Nimble keyboard and reed solos were also an important element of the Soft Machine sound, although, as the group entered its Harvest fusion period, they tended to take a back seat to the work of fleet-fingered electric guitarists, first Allan Holdsworth on Bundles and then John Etheridge here.

1		Aubade
2		The Tale of Taliesin
3		Ban-Ban Caliban
4		Song of Aeolus
5		Out of Season
6		Second Bundle
7		Kayoo
8		The Camden Tandem
9		Nexus
10		One Over the Eight
11		Etka

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