{"id":29981,"date":"2025-09-09T05:30:38","date_gmt":"2025-09-09T09:30:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=29981"},"modified":"2025-08-26T10:59:26","modified_gmt":"2025-08-26T14:59:26","slug":"album-review-soft-machine-floating-world-live","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2025\/09\/09\/album-review-soft-machine-floating-world-live\/","title":{"rendered":"Album Review: Soft Machine \u2013 Floating World Live"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-29982\" src=\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/soft_machine_floating.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"350\" height=\"350\" srcset=\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/soft_machine_floating.jpg 350w, http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/soft_machine_floating-300x300.jpg 300w, http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/soft_machine_floating-150x150.jpg 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 350px) 100vw, 350px\" \/>In my recent look at <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2025\/09\/08\/album-review-soft-works-abracadabra\/\">Soft Works\u2019 <i>Abracadabra<\/i><\/a>, I laid out a very rough sketch of the convoluted timeline that is the Soft Machine story. One of the mileposts in that journey came in 1975 when the then-current lineup made a live album, <i>Floating World Live<\/i>. The personnel for that date included founding member Mike Ratledge on keys, guitar\/Synthaxe master Allan Holdsworth, multi-instrumentalist Karl Jenkins (previously a member from 1972 to \u201884), bassist Roy Babbington (in the group during the \u201870s) and drummer (and \u201870s mainstay) John Marshall. A supergroup indeed.<\/p>\n<p>They made that album, but they didn\u2019t release it until 31 years later.<\/p>\n<p>The aforementioned lineup did make and release one studio album, 1975\u2019s <i>Bundles<\/i>; it would be Soft Machine\u2019s final outing with Ratledge. <i>Bundles<\/i> earned critical praise, but Ratledge\u2019s departure kept the group from capitalizing fully upon that momentum. But the live recording \u2013 which dates from after the <i>Bundles<\/i> sessions but prior to the album\u2019s release \u2013 stands as an organic document of the lineup representing the tail-end of the original Soft Machine era.<\/p>\n<p>Floating World Live, not surprisingly, features much of the then-new material. The sound quality ranks somewhere between okay and very good, but the performance quality more than offsets any deficiencies. And for listeners who prefer the early material, Floating World Live is a splendid summation of the band\u2019s progress to that point. The meditative \u201cFloating World\u201d may remind some of Mike Oldfield, where \u201cBundles\u201d takes off on an aggressively jazzy trip to the outer reaches. \u201cLand of the Bag Snake\u201d has it both ways: angular and accessible.<\/p>\n<p>On this set, the ensemble moves seamlessly from uptempo, knotty tracks to placid, atmospheric ones like \u201cThe Man Who Waved at Trains.\u201d Fans who seek solos will be satisfied by what\u2019s within (see \u201cJ.S.M.\u201d), and those who seek inspired ensemble work will find much to savor as well. As the hype sheet for the remastered version of this archival album emphasizes, <i>Floating World Live<\/i> is a document of \u201ca band at the top of their game.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In my recent look at Soft Works\u2019 Abracadabra, I laid out a very rough sketch of the convoluted timeline that is the Soft Machine story. One of the mileposts in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":29982,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,40,42,64,65],"tags":[3134,1994],"class_list":["post-29981","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fusion","category-instrumental","category-jazz","category-reissue","category-review","tag-allan-holdsworth","tag-soft-machine","cat-32-id","cat-40-id","cat-42-id","cat-64-id","cat-65-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29981","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29981"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29981\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29984,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29981\/revisions\/29984"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29982"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29981"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29981"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29981"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}