FLOATING WORLD LIVE (BREMEN 1975)

This live performance by Soft Machine took place after the studio sessions for Bundles, but before that album came out; Allan Holdsworth is still with the band, and the setlist is very much focused on material from that album plus additional improvisations, rather than delving to any great depth into the band's back catalogue - a symptom, perhaps, of their radically reconfigured musical direction, with Holdsworth's guitar being brought to the fore.

To my ears, there's only one real clunker here, and that's JSM - a drum solo from John Marshall which manages to be everything everyone dislikes about 1970s drum solos. Sure, sure, it's technically adept, but it's fairly soulless stuff, a demonstration of dextrous proficiency without any compositional substance behind it, and it drags on for ten horrid minutes. Trim it off and you'd have four and a half stars easy, because the rest of this absolutely cooks - as it is, it's at the low end of the four star range.