(Canterbury scene, Prog, Jazz-rock) Soft Machine - Six - 1973, APE (image+.cue), lossless

This album definitely falls more in the fusion realm than the typical progressive rock realm. Lots of tasty instrumental music, with lots of improvisation and soloing (or noodling, depending on your tolerance for that sort of thing). The main things it has in common with prog are tricky time signatures and a ton of keyboards. The first thing that identified it as Soft Machine to me is the acidic-sounding organ solo in "Riff".

Personally, I like this album a lot. At least as much as (if not more than) Third, which is generally considered to be the band's masterpiece. And as an added bonus, the sound quality of Six isn't rancid.

Those who like Robert Wyatt's vocals and drumming on the earlier albums may be disappointed to find him gone. I've never really understood the appeal of his singing (heresy, I know, but there it is) and the drumming of John Marshall is more than adequate, so to me the lack of Wyatt isn't a big deal.

The back half of the album is made up of four studio tracks. "The Soft Weed Factor" is a minimalist keyboard-based track that is almost maddeningly repetitive, yet also oddly soothing. "Stanley Stamps Gibbon Album" is the drummer's track, and as such features lots of percussion while the rest of the band jams away over another repetitive piano riff. "Chloe and the Pirates" starts out with a very spacey sounding ambient section, then goes into a fairly mellow jazz mode that reminds me a little of Miles Davis' In a Silent Way. I love that album, so it's not surprising that "Chloe" is my favorite track on Six. Finally we get "1983", which sounds a little like a soundtrack for a haunted house, with a distant, echoey piano playing a series of brief, random-sounding passages and what sounds like some sort of wind chimes being strummed in the foreground.

Taken all at once, this album can be a little overwhelming. But when I'm in the right mood for it, it's a great disc. It also makes for good background music at work.

folder.jpg
Six.log
Soft Machine - Six.ape
Soft Machine - Six.ape.cue
Soft Machine - Six.cue
tau.txt
Covers\Soft Machine - Six - Back.jpg
Covers\Soft Machine - Six - CD.jpg
Covers\Soft Machine - Six - Front.jpg
Covers\Soft Machine - Six - Inlay.jpg

EAC extraction logfile from 9. March 2006, 21:41 for CD
Soft Machine / Six

Used drive : HL-DT-STDVD-ROM GDR8163B Adapter: 1 ID: 1
Read mode : Secure with NO C2, accurate stream, disable cache
Read offset correction : 102
Overread into Lead-In and Lead-Out : Yes

Used output format : Internal WAV Routines
44.100 Hz; 16 Bit; Stereo

Other options :
Fill up missing offset samples with silence : Yes
Delete leading and trailing silent blocks : No
Installed external ASPI interface

Range status and errors
Selected range
Filename E:\Monkey's\Soft Machine\Soft Machine - Six.wav

Peak level 97.7 %
Range quality 100.0 %
CRC 00931CAC
Copy OK

No errors occured

End of status report

1110427342 806277404 Soft Machine - Six.wav

auCDtect: CD records authenticity detector, version 0.8.2
Copyright (c) 2004 Oleg Berngardt. All rights reserved.
Copyright (c) 2004 Alexander Djourik. All rights reserved.
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Processing file: [Soft Machine - Six.wav]

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This track looks like CDDA with probability 100%

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Final Conclusion:
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These tracks looks like CDDA with probability 100%