SEVEN

By 1973, a mere five years after the psychedelic Canterbury jazz-rock debut of the legendary SOFT MACHINE was released in 1968, the band seemed to be like a runaway train with a mad frenzy of lineup changes, stylistic shifts and a pellmell relentlessness to constantly pursue a completely different avenue of musical expression. The band that began with the likes of Robert Wyatt, Kevin Ayers and Mike Ratledge was a completely unrecognizable musical force that would be united in name only. While the departure of Ayers would pave the way towards a headier approach into the world of avant-garde jazz based progressive rock, the departure of Robert Wyatt in 1971 marked a decisively new direction that would find SOFT MACHINE becoming a refugee camp of former Nucleus members.

After a consistent flow of albums that showcased a new version of the band on every single release, SOFT MACHINE engaged in its busiest year yet by releasing not one but two albums including the double vinyl set "Six" in early 1973. The album was followed by yet another series of changes which found bassist and key member Hugh Hopper leaving the band in order to forge a solo career which left a vacancy that was filled by yet another former Nucleus member Roy Babbington who had just participated with Ian Carr on the "Labyrinth" album earlier in the year. With SOFT MACHINE now half Nucleus members and down to one founding member, the dynamics made a dramatic shift once again on the band's second LP of 1973, simple titled SEVEN, the last of the ho-hum number based album titles.

With Ratledge taking a backseat to Karl Jenkins who had become the band's main composer and bandleader, SOFT MACHINE suffered significantly from the loss of the members who brought a fiery passion and sense of experimental pursuit to the band's output from "Third" through "Fifth." While "Six" garnered enough steam to sustain a double album's worth of material that remained engaging and stimulating enough to warrant a worthy chapter of the SOFT MACHINE canon, SEVEN on the other hand found itself on a dreamy sort of simmer mode where monotonous grooves and lackluster soloing resorted to a sort of default setting. Gone were the crafty jazz excursions into the avant-garde that Elton Dean brought to the table and with Ratledge ceding his authority as band leader, under the direction of Jenkins the SOFT MACHINE experiment ceased to be engaging on SEVEN.

The album starts out fiery enough with the feisty "Nettle Bed" insinuating a more energetic rock based jazz-fusion that eschewed the brash experimental approach that fortified the previous three albums with a senses of purpose however beginning with the second track "Carol Ann" the band tones things down significantly with lackadaisical bass grooves, sleepy keyboard accompaniments that fell from that classic Canterbury grace and some of the laziest percussion performances on any SOFT MACHINE album. The tracks pretty much run together seamlessly with questionable 32 second tracks such "Bone Air" that really serve no purpose other than to bridge a small gap between the two tracks that bookend it. While the band members do their best to spice things up with time signature extravaganzas and various instrumental soloing bits, the entire album comes across as a musical team that had exhausted itself by its relentless pursuit of the next big thing and a touring schedule that obviously robbed the members of their vitality.

Overall SEVEN is an okay listening experience as no SOFT MACHINE album was ever truly horrible. Although it sounds like a soft jazz lite version of the band in comparison to the innovative albums that came before, there are still moments of interest that keep the album from falling completely on its face however in the end the album just lacks any sort of fiery passion that forced SOFT MACHINE to take its constant pursuit for new experimental touches that continued to propel the band into its continuous pursuit of progression. SEVEN by far is my least favorite album of the classic SOFT MACHINE years and it would do the band well to take some much needed time to rejuvenate before they would emerge two years later with the much more innovative and fiery "Bundles" which would see a reinvigorated band welcome the guitar playing skills of Allan Holdsworth to the mix. The definitive nadir of the classic run of albums from the debut to 1976's "Softs" IMHO.