Soft Machine - Drop (2009 Moonjune Records)
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Artist: Soft Machine
Album: Drop
Released: 2009
Moonjune Records (MJR023)
Genre: Canterbury/Jazz-Rock
moonjune.com : This CD documents an often overlooked phase in the long and complex history of Soft Machine - Australian drummer Phil Howard's five-month interim behind the drum stool between Robert Wyatt's departure and his eventual long-term replacement John Marshall. It did last long enough to record half of the studio album "Fifth" (1972) and a couple of BBC radio sessions, but until now no official document of that line-up in its preferred environment - the stage. Howard was brought into Soft Machine by saxophonist Elton Dean, both being members of Elton's side project Just Us, and under their combined influence the band became freer and wilder than ever before (or after) in its existence, pushing longtime leaders Mike Ratledge and Hugh Hopper into unchartered areas of electric madness. Before long they'd decided this wasn't the way to go, but meanwhile the line-up had antagonised audiences throughout extensive tours of the UK and Europe. This CD documents the German leg of the tour and, as veteran music journalist Steve Lake notes in his detailed liner notes, is a revelation - a glimpse of a highly exciting alternative route Soft Machine decided not to explore further.
"An unsung jazz drums hero, Phil Howard is one of the world's greatest jazz drummers that 99.99% of people have never heard of."
“...here is an album to savour. A document of a mighty band with a whirlwind drummer, a very special highlight among the Soft Machine’s invigorating live recordings.” - Steve Lake
"Howard's "polyrhythmic" approach takes the music away from the complexity of odd meters, into a different complexity - that of thoroughly organic playing. His drumming displays a peculiar, somewhat static feel - as he doesn't play breaks or stress the beats in the typical rock way, and principally uses cymbals and miniature snare rolls, the music seems to be floating in the air. Soft Machine no longer play any actual 'pieces', but rather separate conglomerates from different fragments of pieces, which only emerge sporadically here and there. On the whole, its music seems closer to the new jazz groups, like Weather Report, than any rock band - the only connection that remains with rock now lies solely with amplification and the use of electric instruments. Admittedly the music is sometimes difficult on the ear, but for those familiar with Soft Machine's development and related groups, it was a celebration". - Norbert Odorozinsky (review of the Soft Machine's October 13th 1971 concert in Düsseldorf, in German magazine "Sounds" Nov/Dec 1971)
allaboutjazz.com: The departure of Robert Wyatt from the drum stool in Soft Machine and the arrival of Phil Howard could have been a potentially fraught moment in the band's evolution back in the early '70s. Until now the only documentation of Howard's time with the band was on one side of Fifth (Sony/BMG, 1972), which was no more than a tantalizing glimpse of the direction towards which the band was evolving. This live material from the band's German tour in late 1971 is a much better indicator of where it was going, and to put it simply it was heading even further out than it had been before.
That's not to say that the degree of continuity between the band with Wyatt and the band with Howard is pronounced because it isn't, and whilst the two drummers shared an elastic conception of time it's clear that both were committed to a creative, ever-evolving playing conception. That wouldn't have counted for much if it hadn't been for the fact that they were in the company of like-minded souls, and here the music rolls and boils in a way that guarantees that audiences didn't receive the same fare two nights running. Keyboardist Mike Ratledge's "All White" is alive with group tension, with Elton Dean's long, darkly elegant saxello lines acting almost as an anchor in the midst of Howard's hyperactivity.
Set against that, Ratledge's title track serves almost as calm amidst the storm, although again Howard's percussive maelstrom comes on like the work of a perpetually restless soul. Against that, Hugh Hopper's bass often tends to take a back seat, but the point remains that without his work the music would lack internal structure. That point is reinforced by the seamless segue from "M.C." into "Out-Bloody-Rageous," which in compositional terms is taken relatively straight, albeit with more fire than was sometimes the case, as with previous live documents of the band with Wyatt. The twin-keyboard passage here, with Dean at the electric piano, is all subtlety, however, with Howard the one either allowed the most room, or the most committed to rhythmic drive.
Hopper's fuzz bass comes into its own on the opening of "As If," where four instrumental voices vie equally for attention before things become relatively tranquil, with Ratledge and Dean's deft keyboard and reed washes provoking Howard into some of his softest work before he ups the momentum even whilst his colleagues commit to lighter, less emphatic music. The dark ambience of the piece might almost have been written with such resulting tension in mind.
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