#297: Soft Machine - Third (1970)

Emily: Sometimes, an album on this list perfectly fits the mood and situation in which I'm listening to it. It could be a happy-go-lucky day with '70s pop music in the background while I'm cooking dinner, or brooding post-punk as I organize my bedroom with seriousness and focus. Today, I was doing research and assembling fact sheets in the library about law firms for my upcoming on-campus interviewing. It was after a meeting about the interview program, and I was feeling a bit anxious but also oddly reassured. Enter: the jazz fusion stylings of Soft Machine. The jazz element made the album great music for reading and focusing on details, while the fusion elements - specifically with experimental rock - caught my attention just enough to quell my anxiety but not enough to divert my attention away from the research. All in all, Third was great preparation music - perhaps next time I'll listen to it during exams.
Favorite Tracks: Slightly All the Time; Moon in June; Out-Bloody-Rageous

Zack: We’ve run into jazz fusion a few times before, with my favorite example being Aja by Steely Dan. From the Wikipedia wormhole I’m just now emerging from, I can see that it traces a lot of its origins to Miles Davis’s Bitches Brew, which would have been released right as Soft Machine was recording Third. I have no hard evidence that they were actually influenced by Bitches Brew and haven’t listened to that album yet (another Miles Davis album should be coming up in the next 50 or so though, so maybe soon) so as to compare. But I’m going to go out on a limb and say they got a copy and liked what they heard. Soft Machine incorporate their electrical instruments in with a handful of additional musicians all playing more typical jazz instruments, with the results being a pretty free-flowing give-and-take between the jazz and rock elements. Third is just four reeeeaaaaally long songs (the shortest clocking in at over 18 minutes) that take some pretty mighty twists and turns along the way. I’ve been known to utilize some of the jazz albums we’ve come across as background music to cooking or homework – Birth of the Cool and A Love Supreme foremost among them – and I could easily see this album sliding into that rotation. It’s dynamic enough to keep you from zoning out but sedated enough that you can do other things.

Favorite Tracks: Moon in June; Slightly All the Time; Facelift