KINGS OF CANTERBURY

At last this long advertised double set has become available for sale at Amazon.UK - 6 months I had to wait and with no track list information available. DON'T BE LIKE ME, DON'T BUY IT. It is for the complete completists. All this material has already been released through Voiceprint/Blueprint. Thanks to Progarchives I now have a better tracking listing than provided in the liner notes, indicating three original sources of the live recordings are on the album. One, "Paradiso" has become an increasingly essential Machine album for me - and at least the recording quality on this part of the set is good (indeed, possibly better than both the first two legitimate Soft machine solo albums). However, the rest of the recordings on "Kings Of Canterbury" are poor bootleg quality (made by friends of the Machine) - the recent Cuneiform live Machine releases are so much betterquality.

Instead buy "Live At Paradiso" the single album (to hear Soft Machine in transition from prog to jazz rock). BUT avoid this and avoid the lousy quality of the rest of the recordings.