Home » Jazz Articles » Album Review » Soft Machine: Tales of Taliesin: The EMI Years Anthology 1975-1981

257

Soft Machine: Tales of Taliesin: The EMI Years Anthology 1975-1981

By

View read count
Soft Machine: Tales of Taliesin: The EMI Years Anthology 1975-1981
With the release of Bundles (Harvest, 1975), Soft Machine moved more definitively into the riff-based fusion territory that keyboardist/reed man Karl Jenkins had begun pushing the band since his arrival on Six (Sony, 1973). With reeds becoming increasingly less dominant, and the group's only remaining founding member, keyboardist Mike Ratledge, relegated to a backline position, this incarnation—distanced completely from the minimalist-informed, free jazz-centric, but still high volume and rock-edged classic quartet that recorded albums like the seminal Third (Sony, 1970)—truly felt like a completely different band.

But if there was any period of this now-legendary British group's history that had a certain element of consistency (in approach, if not lineup) it was the final, fusion years from 1975-1981, when the group went out with a whimper on Land of Cockayne (Harvest, 1981)—originally a Jenkins solo album but reclassified as Softs for reasons more marketing than artistic. Tales of Taliesin: The EMI Years Anthology 1975-1981 collects material from the group's final four albums, also including 1976's Softs and 1978's Alive & Well: Recorded in Paris, and if there's no bonus material to entice completists who have already picked up Esoteric's fine remasters, it's certainly a well-chosen entry point.

The disc does contain bonus material released on Esoteric's double-disc expansion of Alive & Well—the funky 10/4 "K's Riff" and gently lyrical "Song of Aeolus," whose inclusion here is curious as it's not necessarily better than the original studio version on Softs—but other than that it's all material from the original releases, though Mark Powell's remastering of the EMI/Harvest-era Soft Machine is, without a doubt, definitive. The anthology also includes Jenkins' contentious, Giorgio Moroder-informed piece of techno-fluff, "Soft Space," which closed the original, single-disc Alive and Well on an equally curious note for those who believed it to be Softs' swan song.

On the plus side, Tales of Taliesin includes one of jazz-rock's defining moments: guitarist Allan Holdsworths six-minute solo on Bundles' "Hazard Profile." A marvel of extended construction, it's not Holdsworth's first major recorded moment—that would be his equally mind-blowing solo on "Hector's House," from trumpeter Ian Carr's Belladonna (Vertigo, 1972)—but it's a remarkable, breathtaking combination of occasional economies and viscerally choked off notes, peppered amidst furious cascades of notes that show Holdsworth's touchstones to be more saxophone than guitar, specifically John Coltrane's renowned "sheets of sound."

Holdsworth's replacement, John Etheridge, is also well-represented, especially on "The Tale of Taliesin," where he proves himself equally capable of blinding speed and unmistakable lyricism. There are other soloists amongst this two-hour collection, but the truth is that latter-day Soft Machine—with Ratledge bowing out after Bundles (barring a brief guest appearance on Softs)—was Karl Jenkins' band, compositionally speaking, but guitar was its defining voice, along with drummer John Marshall's relentless energy and groove. Tales of Taliesin: The EMI Years Anthology 1975-1981 may not offer anything new for Soft Machine completists, but it's the perfect entry point for those who either dismissed post-classic lineup Softs or are new to the group altogether, and like their fusion filled with knotty time signatures, anthemic riffs and muscular guitar pyrotechnics.

Track Listing

CD1: Hazard Profile Part One; Gone Sailing; Bundles; Land of the Bag Snakes; The Floating World; The Tale of Taliesin; Out of Season; Second Bundle; Nexus; One Over The Eight; Number Three; The Nodder. CD2: White Kite; Eos; Odds Bullets and Blades Part One; Odds Bullets and Blades Part Two; Puffin'; Huffin'; K's Riff; Song of Aeolus; Soft Space; Over n' Above; (Black) Velvet Mountain; Sly Monkey; Panoramania.

Personnel

Soft Machine
band / ensemble / orchestra

Roy Babbington: bass guitar (CD1#1-10); Allan Holdsworth: electric, acoustic and 12-string guitars (CD1#1-5), lead guitar (CD2#10-13); Karl Jenkins: oboe (CD1#1-5), piano, electric piano (CD1#1-10), soprano saxophone (CD1#1-5), pianette (CD1#6-10), string synthesizer (CD1#6-10), Mini Moog synthesizer (CD1#6-10, CD2#10-13), electric keyboards (CD1#11-12), Synclavier synthesizer (CD2#10-13), Yamaha CD 80 (CD2#10-13), ; John Marshall: drums, percussion; Mike Ratledge: organ, electric piano and synthesizer (CD1#1-5); John Etheridge: acoustic and electric guitars (CD1#6-12, CD2#1-9); Alan Wakeman: soprano and tenor saxphones (CD1#6-10); Rick Sanders: violin (CD1#11-12, CD2#1-9); Steve Cook: bass guitar (CD1#11-12, CD2#1-9); Jack Bruce: bass (CD2#10-13); Ray Warleigh: alto saxophone and bass flute (CD2#10-13); Dick Morrissey: tenor saxophone (CD2#10-13); Alan Parker: rhythm guitar (CD2#10-13); Tony Rivers: backing vocals (CD2#10-13); Stu Calver: backing vocals (CD2#10-13); John Perry: backing vocals (CD2#10-13); John Taylor: Fender Rhodes (CD2#10-13).

Album information

Title: Tales of Taliesin: The EMI Years Anthology 1975-1981 | Year Released: 2011 | Record Label: Esoteric Recordings

Tags

Comments


PREVIOUS / NEXT




Support All About Jazz

Get the Jazz Near You newsletter All About Jazz has been a pillar of jazz since 1995, championing it as an art form and, more importantly, supporting the musicians who make it. Our enduring commitment has made "AAJ" one of the most culturally important websites of its kind, read by hundreds of thousands of fans, musicians and industry figures every month.

Go Ad Free!

To maintain our platform while developing new means to foster jazz discovery and connectivity, we need your help. You can become a sustaining member for as little as $20 and in return, we'll immediately hide those pesky ads plus provide access to future articles for a full year. This winning combination vastly improves your AAJ experience and allow us to vigorously build on the pioneering work we first started in 1995. So enjoy an ad-free AAJ experience and help us remain a positive beacon for jazz by making a donation today.

More

Tramonto
John Taylor
Ki
Natsuki Tamura / Satoko Fujii
Duality Pt: 02
Dom Franks' Strayhorn
The Sound of Raspberry
Tatsuya Yoshida / Martín Escalante

Popular

Old Home/New Home
The Brian Martin Big Band
My Ideal
Sam Dillon
Ecliptic
Shifa شفاء - Rachel Musson, Pat Thomas, Mark Sanders
Lado B Brazilian Project 2
Catina DeLuna & Otmaro Ruíz

Get more of a good thing!

Our weekly newsletter highlights our top stories, our special offers, and upcoming jazz events near you.

Install All About Jazz

iOS Instructions:

To install this app, follow these steps:

All About Jazz would like to send you notifications

Notifications include timely alerts to content of interest, such as articles, reviews, new features, and more. These can be configured in Settings.