Third (Soft Machine Album) - Track Details

Track Details

Much of the production technique in recording and editing on the entire album is quite unpolished, perhaps deliberately so, especially on side one where some of the extracts have low fidelity monophonic sound and excessive tape hiss. On this and other tracks, edits are often quite coarse, and sometimes combine sections that are slightly out of tune with each other. Some of this may be explained by lower recording industry standards of the time, but much of it appears to be the result of combining home recordings and collages (mostly done at the home of the band's soundman Bob Woolford, using his tape machines) with professional studio recordings made at IBC Studios, an in-demand London studio at the time and a favourite of the Bee Gees and The Who in particular.

"Slightly All the Time" and "Out-Bloody-Rageous" are the most straightforward tracks in Soft Machine's new jazz sound, and set the tone for this and their next two albums. "Esther's Nose Job" on the bonus disc originally appeared on Volume Two, and no longer includes its cacophonous introduction, but adds a new section, "Pigling Bland", which appeared as a track on its own on the group's Fifth album a few years later. This version does not contain the lyrics found in the original, but it does include some scat singing from Wyatt. All three pieces on the bonus disc are performed as one continuous suite. (The original vinyl edition had a fade-out and fade-in of the drum solo connecting the second and third pieces, as was necessary for a two-sided record.)