Hidden Details

Hidden Details is a new studio album of Soft Machine, recorded at the late great Jon Hiseman's Temple Studio in Surrey, England, last December 2017. Released on John Etheridge's Dyan Records exactly 50 years since the release of the band's 1968 debut album The Soft Machine. Hidden Details is very much the product of an active, contemporary sounding outfit striking out with its own agenda. Though informed by the past, the music here is neither weighed down nor beholden to it. Animated with the same ineffable and inquisitive spirit that has always made this group throughout its fifty years such a compelling experience. The yearning tenderness of Heart Off Guard and the come-down reveries of Broken Hill and Drifting White showcase the more intimate aspects of Soft Machine's personality while in contrast, One Glove gives the more pugilistic side of John Etheridge's playing an outing. The terse angularities of the title track and Life on Bridges highlight a fearless disposition, as does the buzzsaw interplay heard during Ground Lift and Flight of the Jett, both featuring Roy Babbington's decisive interventions. The surging lyricism of Fourteen Hour Dream flirts with an almost popish sensibility, underscoring the sense that this is a quartet that is fundamentally at ease with itself. The return of what some older fans of the band have called 'cosmic tinkles’'– the appearance of layers of cyclical electric piano motifs – is especially welcome. Their brief manifestation on The Man Who Waved at Trains and Third-era, Out-Bloody-Rageous, both stone-cold Mike Ratledge-composed classics, adds an extra spacey dimension to the overall sound. Travis' use of looping technology with his flutes creates its own beguiling world and can be heard to powerful effect on the beautiful and enigmatic Breathe, where his hovering notes are underpinned by Marshall's oblique yet atmospheric percussion.