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Finding Work for Old Softies

Robert Carlberg | Seattle | 02/23/2007

(4 out of 5 stars)

"This is Leonardo Pavkovic's second attempt to put together a working band out of ex-Soft Machine players, with John Etheridge replacing Allan Holdsworth from the first attempt (variously called Software or Soft Works). The core trio of Hugh Hopper, Elton Dean and John Marshall play together so well that almost any situation you put them in is going to be worthwhile. Certainly Etheridge holds his own against this lot, and maybe even listens to them a little better than did the mercurial Holdsworth.



Alas, this lineup was doomed as well, with the untimely passing of Dean shortly after these sessions.



This album itself is a mixed bag. There are two tracks that sound a bit too much like studio improvisations. There are a couple in conventional head-solo-tail jazz constructions. There is a Softs medley, Mike Ratledge's "Facelift," "As If" & "Slightly All The Time" (titled "Ratlift"). There is a ten-minute Hopper epic with typically Hopperean twists and turns.



As a guitar quartet without the keyboards and compositional muscle of Ratledge or Karl Jenkins to anchor the group, the music tends to get a little "wandery," although to his credit Etheridge wrote the three best tracks -- the last of which, "Strange Comforts," puts Elton in such a sweet setting that it functions as a fitting, if unintended, eulogy."