I really like this kind of repeating and spacey keyboard sequences. I hear Mahavishnu Orchestra influences in the song The Floating World. Nice music and great guitarist, what's his name

Allan Holdsworth is the guitarist. Great stuff.

I was definitely influenced by Soft Machine. Stan turned me on to them in our freshman year at Madison College (1972). I remember being fascinated that there was another Wyatt who was into unusual music. I liked Soft Machine Third the best, and was disappointed with Fourth, but I still followed Wyatt's work with Matching Mole, and loved his solo LPs Rock Bottom and Ruth is Stranger Than Richard.

Frank

Thanks Frank. Although I actually was thinking of the Bundles-incarnation of SM (which was totally different from the period you're seem to like, more jazz-rock and with two keyboarders who played a lot of those floating lines) it's great to hear you speak about another influence than the usual ones. Yeah, that Robert Wyatt did some strange things; I believe he partly made the Canterbury scene happen. After all he was one of the guys who was in The Wilde Flowers, the band that started the whole thing in 1965. Richard Sinclair was there too, he later played in Hatfield & The North, Caravan and Camel (where he just missed our Kit Watkins ).

Speaking of the name of "Wyatt": Do you know Doug Wyatt? He played in a band called Red Letter and on the solo-album of its guitarist Robby Aceto (who played with David Sylvian amongst others).

Hi Frank,

For you interest: Cuneiform recently released the CD/DVD set Grides. The CD contains a performance from 1970 (so before Four), recorded in Amsterdam, while the DVD contains a 20 minutes part from a show from 1971, shot in Germany. The quality from the latter is very good, mainly because the German tv is taking good care of their archive. Although at times quite jazzy, it's interesting to see those two keyboardplayer with the old electric piano's and that typically Canterbury organ.

The funny Wyatt story.

Back in the 1990's when I became a HtM fan and before I had internet, I was at the record story and browsing thru all kind of CDs: I didnt really remember the names of HtM's members in fully, so when I saw a record titled Shleep with Robert Wyatt I was very happy so I bought it right away. At home looking at the names at the back sleeve on a HtM album I was really dissapointed. It was Frank Wyatt who was the Happy member not this unfamiliar Robert.
I went back to the store with it without listening to that CD.

Yeah, and that album turned out to be a collector's item??

Well, if you ask me, no. I listened to some samples of Shleep today actually, but it didnt catch my attention.

Maybe there's some other album you could recommend? I noticed that Frank likes Rock Bottom and Ruth is Stranger Than Richard.

I've listened to Rock Bottom in the seventies, when journalists wrote it was a great album, but it didn't catch my attention. I haven't got solo-work from him, just his stuff with Soft Machine, Matching Mole and The Wild Flowers and guest-appearances on albums from Björk, Anja Garbarek, Hatfield And The North, Sigmatropic and Ben Watt.

That is indeed plenty of stuff, featuring Robert Wyatt. Didn't know he played on Björk's albums. I tried with Soft Machine one time, but it was too jazzy, even though I like jazz-oriented music.

If you want to hear some Soft Machine work that has clear similarities with HTM you should have a listen to the newly remastered albums Bundles, Softs and Land Of Cockayne.

Tnx for recommending, I will have those you mentioned in mind when buying new (old) music. I will also give the Third a chance (Frank's favourite). Do you like that album?

I don't know Third, although I might have heard some of its tunes. The last couple of years a lot of live-recordings and compilation-albums from the Softs have been released and a couple of them came on my desk in order to write a review. My preference though goes to the more jazz-rock based albums like Bundles and Softs. The site from Esoteric Recordings gives you more information on those albums. The only one I don't know is the live-album.

Some information on Third. And indeed, tracks like Facelift and Moon in June (which would become the inspiration for the label MOONJUNE Records I know from some of those recordings I mentioned, while they are also been played by Soft Works and The Soft Machine Legacy, bands that were/are formed with Soft Machine-members and play the music from the past, but also new music in the vein of SM.