LAND OF COCKAYNE

It is debatable whether "Rubber Riff" or this album is the low point of Machine's recording career. Some people reckon this was a contractual obligations album for Harvest Records and other have suggested Karl Jenkins was attempting to produce a concept album? Whatever, it is not the Soft Machine in any one of its many modes heard in the previous ten years. Neither is it true progressive rock, rather inferior quality jazz fusion.

The presence of Jenkins, Allan Holdsworth, Jack Bruce and even Dick Morrisey (formerly of If and about to form the successful Morrissey-Mullen Band), in theory should make it a minor who's who of a recording. But is flops badly, hurt especially by plodding compositions on which the guests rarely sparkle in solos.

Avoid it or be disappointed.