FACELIFT

The first few sentences of the liner notes tells you all in case you bought this album with your eyes and ears closed: you have been suckered into buying a bad bootleg instead of one of the pristine posthumous recordings from say Hux records (BBC sessions) or Cuneiform (usual stellar selves). But then again, you should've known better just by seeing that this is a Voiceprint label release that specializes in doubtful origin recordings, watered down sessions of shady origins. Knowing this (having read the leaflet) I decided to rent the Cd from the library - you did not think this old geezer would get suckered into buying it did you? - just to get confirmation of it and be able to review it honestly and having heard it , at least partially because the sound is so atrocious that scan the first twenty second of each track could've been enough.

The worst part of this hoax is that there is available almost the same concert (on a different night of the tour but with similar set list) called Virtually and Noisette both with a pristine sound on artist-friendly Cuneiform record label - as opposed to the murky sound taken from a bad cassette recorder in the crowd as this junk. I do not mind spending a bit of cash to review expandable but correct albums from great artistes like Soft Machine, but here I have a feeling that outside having rented it to make this horrendous review to warn the planet (I hope) to stay away from such a pile of crap as this "release". I have a hard time understanding how Brian Hopper (Hugh's brother) actually wrote the liner notes and can still look at himself in the mirror after that. Well he does warn you in those famous first words.. Another real rip off is that those disc actually last around 40 minutes each and with ac little editing (diminishing the length of the applause for example) the whole thing could've been stashed on a single disc. But if you are going to rip-off someone, you might as well do a full scam than half of one, right?

M@X , if I provide you with a receipt for the rental of this double album , do I get a refund from the ProgArchives and you put it down as professional expenses? I will not even count my precious time wasted and the aural damages by the shoddy sound. STAY AWAYYYYYYYYYY from this one!