Soft Machine plunged deeper into jazz and contemporary electronic music on this pivotal release, which incited The Village Voice to call it a milestone achievement when it was released. It's a double album of stunning music, with each side devoted to one composition -- two by
Mike Ratledge, and one each by
Hopper and
Wyatt, with substantial help from a number of backup musicians, including Canterbury mainstays
Elton Dean and
Jimmy Hastings. The
Ratledge songs come closest to fusion jazz, although this is fusion laced with tape loop effects and hypnotic, repetitive keyboard patterns.
Hugh Hopper's "Facelift" recalls "21st Century Schizoid Man" by
King Crimson, although it's more complex, with several quite dissimilar sections. The pulsing rhythms, chaotic horn and keyboard sounds, and dark drones on "Facelift" predate some of what
Hopper did as a solo artist later (this song was actually culled from two live performances in 1970). On his capricious composition "Moon in June,"
Robert Wyatt draws on musical ideas from early 1967 demos done with producer
Giorgio Gomelsky. Lyrically, it's a satirical alternative to the pretension displayed by a lot of rock writing of the era, and combined with
the Softs' exotic instrumentation, it makes for quite a listen (the compilation Triple Echo includes a BBC broadcast recording of "Moon in June" with different albeit equally fanciful lyrics, and the
Robert Wyatt archival collection
'68, released by
Cuneiform in 2013, features a remastered version of
Wyatt's original demo of the song, recorded in the U.S. following
the Softs' tour opening for the Jimi Hendrix Experience). Not exactly rock,
Third nonetheless pushed the boundaries of rock into areas previously unexplored, and it managed to do so without sounding self-indulgent. A better introduction to the group is either of the first two records, but once introduced, this is the place to go. ~ Peter Kurtz