VOLUME TWO

As Kevin Ayers left Soft Machine, he took his pop psychedelia with him, but, with the definitive entrance of Hugh Hopper, a jazzier feel came in and was mixed with Wyatt's pop-Dada and Ratledge's organ virtuosity, leading to an interesting and unique product with a plenty of great ideas and some additional experimentalism.

Their first album was already very good, but, for me, this is their first excellent record. First and foremost, the change in sound is already unbelievable: the jazz-rock these three guys started to make by 1969 is so acid that it can actually melt somebody's brain of first listen, specially since there was hardly any trace of it in 1968's The Soft Machine; Ayers was a great songwriter, unfortunately, his bass-playing was weak and though the booklet of the debut credits him to playing guitar as well, I honestly never heard any of it, Hugh, on the other hand, doesn't write songs per se, but what they needed by this point was a bass player who could really give them a floor on which to stand while simultaneously bringing the house down, and that's exactly what Hopper delivered; Ratledge's distinctive fuzz-organ is almost entirely developed here, in the first record, it was somewhat weak in sound and extremely psychedelic in nature, here, however, it has become very angry and just plain psychotic, and I prefer it; the sheer grandiosity of Third, though not exactly present here, is hinted at by the sound of the whole Volume Two and both "Rivmic Melodies" and "Esther's Nose Job" as effectively continuous pieces; and, last but not least, Wyatt finally unleashed both his paranoid drumming and Dadaist lyrics, some of the things I really love in him.

Discussing every single track here is an excercise in futility and self-indulgence since, like I said before, there are two extended pieces here plus more two inbetween them, so I'll give a review of the four "biggies" instead.

"Rivmic Melodies" is maybe the most schizophrenic part of Volume Two, not least because it is divided in 10 'songs' (alledgedly an advice given to them by Frank Zappa). It is really very fierce and there's hardly a moment to catch breath, with all of it's subdivisions being actually very brief and very weird as well. Wyatt's lyrics vary from stupidly matter-of-fact to silly and simplistic, but I think they're all brilliant, specially because nobody but Wyatt himself could have thought of them.

"As Long As He Lies Perfectly Still" is a sweet tribute to Kevin Ayers and his strange macrobiotic diet, including even references to him living in Mallorca and of songs he wrote for SM's debut such " Why Are We Sleeping?". I particularly enjoy the interplay between Ratledge's piano and organ, and Hopper's bass, I guess I could call it 'Canterbury Heavy Metal', since it actually sounds very menacing.

"Dedicated To You, But You Weren't Listening" is a Hopper tune written using a droning, alternatively tuned acoustic guitar. Wyatt, once again provides the eccentic lyrics, another preciosity of his is the way the intonates what he's singing to make it sound heartfelt and meaningful when he's in fact singing about nothing at all. This song could have been a love song or something if it's content wasn't this distorted and cubist, but I'm very glad it is.

"Esther's Nose Job" is, musically, Ratledge's baby and it's he who 'conducts' it using his 'talking' playing and 'singing' atmospheric touches. Maybe this is where Ratledge started to complain about vocals over his "beautiful music", and I partly agree with him: while the lyrics are just as eccentric and brilliant as on the rest of the album, they kinda fight against the music itself instead of dwelling in a symbiotic manner; on the other hand, this piece couldn't IMO have stood on it's own with just the trio and Brian Hopper's occasional bursts of background cacophony, it needed the Charig, Evans, Dobson, Dean to make it really shine (for further proof please check Noisette or Grides), or the lyrics.

Maybe because most of the tracks themselves couldn't hold on their own, Volume Two is not a masterpiece, but still I consider it to be an excellent album and, dare I say, a good place to start, at least if you like really mad stuff like I do.

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