A few weeks after the release of the incredible Fourth, the classic quartet of the Soft Machine--Mike Ratledge, Elton Dean, Hugh Hopper and Robert Wyatt--played an unlikely two-night stand in an art museum in Høvikodden, Norway, some twenty minutes outside of Oslo. Personal relations within the band were low; tensions were high; and founding drummer Robert Wyatt was already looking for the exit. But what transpired on those nights, now captured in a massive archival release from Cuneiform Records, was arguably the finest incarnation of the Softs at the absolute peak of their powers. Høvikoddden 1971 documents a band torn between shrieking free jazz, throbbing minimalism, psychedelic space rock and fuzzy, proto-punk garage stomp--suspended between their avant-pop beginnings and their fusion future. A three-hour, four LP slab of the Soft Machine may be too much for the casual fan. Or it might just be the ideal point of entry.
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