THE END OF AN EAR

The End of an Ear is Soft Machine drummer/ vocalist Robert Wyatt´s debut studio album. The album was recorded while he was still a member of Soft Machine ( which he would soon leave).

The music on The End of an Ear is avant garde jazz/ rock and most songs are unstructured jamming with lots of avant garde sounds like the wailing dissonant sax from Elton Dean or the outbursts of atonal piano runs. The album is fully instrumental albeit for a few notes hummed by Robert Wyatt with his easily recognizable voice. The Canterbury tag is a bit hard to understand while listening to this album, but maybe later solo works from Wyatt justifies his inclusion in this catagory? ( surely it´s not because of his involment with Soft Machine?)

The musicianship on the album is excellent. Lots of great performers show their skills and Robert Wyatt experiments with lots of intricate drumming.

The production is good.

I´m sorry but I can´t hold it back. This is a horrible album for me. I can´t stand this avant garde jazzy jamming. This is completely as unlistenable for me as Soft Machine four and five. This has been such a stressful experience for me that I must lie down to get my heart working in regular mode again. I can see from other reviews that some people enjoy this far more than I do, but this is simply too noisy and stressful for me to enjoy. The only reason I will not rate this with 1 star is the fact that the musicianship is so excellent. The compositions remain unlistenable for me though. I´ll stretch and give The End of an Ear 2 stars. I still don´t understand what happened to that great band Soft Machine after their first two excellent albums ? Did every member of the band decide that anything they would touch from now on should purely include noisy unlistenable avant garde elements ? If I want to hear avant garde rock I´ll listen to Zappa or Henry Cow anytime over this. At least their approach to the avant garde genre contains memorable and exciting elements.

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