SIX

Elton Dean left Soft Machine after Five, and in came Karl Jenkins, who plays on both reed instruments and keyboards on this albums. The arrival of Jenkins is, like the departure of Robert Wyatt, a controversial point amongst Soft Machine fans, some of whom resent the way he eventually took control over the band, but - despite the fact that I am a major fan of Robert Wyatt and his tenure in the Machine - I think Karl was exactly what the group needed at the time.

Mike Ratledge has said that at around this point his enthusiasm for the group had been flagging, not least because being in the position of being the only remaining original member of the group proved to be deeply uncomfortable. The fact that Jenkins contributes about as much to the songwriting on this album as Ratledge (they compose more or less all the tracks, Hugh Hopper's creepy and foreboding 1983 being a notable exception) seems to show that the new boy had a heap of musical ideas and was able to take on the burden of producing material for the group just as Ratledge was beginning to falter.

The change in the band's sound evident on this album represents a significant artistic shift. Backing away from the almost-completely-jazz model of fusion that dominated the previous two studio albums, the double-disc sets shows a bolder, rockier, funkier model of fusion, played by a band which sounds fresh and revitalised. Even All White from Fifth, which makes an appearance on the live disc, sounds utterly different from its previous incarnation - and greatly improved to boot, with the new lineup breathing new life into the track. (Remember, John Marshall didn't drum on the studio rendition because it was recorded before he joined the group, so there's two entirely new players performing on this version.)

Diverse, dramatic, and once again grabbing the listener's attention and forging their own bold vision of fusion rather than pandering to the jazz establishment, Six put the Softs straight back to the top - and finally won them the awards and approval from the jazz world that had eluded them previously. It is probably best to treat this band as a different group with the same name as the band that produced the first three studio albums, but having passed through two difficult transitional albums the transformed Soft Machine is a more than technically competent beast in its own right. It's really a fusion group rather than a Canterbury scene institution at this point, and whilst I tend to prefer the Wyatt-era albums in general, I'm increasingly hearing the worth of the Jenkins albums as my fusion tastes mature. Those who enjoy the later Jenkins-led version of the band can't go too far wrong with taking in the album where his vision of the Machine began to form.