Soft Machine - Drop (2025 Remastered version) (1971) [Hi-Res]

“Phil has a very intense thing going.”- Mike Ratledge, 1971

SOFT MACHINE - DROP
Rare archive recording features Soft Machine in explosive action
by SID SMITH

In 1971 the ever-evolving Soft Machine entered yet another period of transition following the departure of one of their founding members, drummer Robert Wyatt five months after the release of their Fourth album in February 1971. His replacement was Phil Howard, who had come to the UK along with a wave of other top-drawer players from Australia and New Zealand in the 1960s and was part of Elton Dean’s group, Just Us.

Whilst this decision may have been born out of necessity, Howard's arrival was a boost to Dean’s desire to move to a looser mode of expression, something he'd been doing since Fletcher’s Blemish (from Soft Machine’s Fourth) and their live blow-out, Neo Caliban Grides, which had been opening live shows of the day to startling effect.

Howard's arrival altered the band’s sound with a challenging approach that tipped the group into a deeper improvisational direction that fully embraced a more strident and uncompromising presentation during their live shows. When observers describe drummers as 'whipping up a storm' this is certainly true in Howard’s case. His playing often sounds more like a force of nature than anything remotely to do with keeping time or adding rhythmic emphasis, reminiscent at times of Stu Martin or Tony Williams’ polyrhythmic salvos, constantly pushing the group out to the very edge of their material.

Though Drop contains several regular titles from the Soft Machine set list, you’re unlikely to have heard them played quite like this.
As fast and loose as Robert Wyatt could be with tight arrangements such as Slightly All The Time and Out-Bloody-Rageous, Howard doesn’t so much play around with them as burst through them in a squall of ride cymbal, clearly regarding the drums as much a frontline instrument as the sax and keyboards. As Dean and Ratledge roar full blast on their respective instruments, bassist Hugh Hopper, so integral to the early make-up of the band, provides an anchor to the heads and riffs that help the audience navigate their way as Howard embarks on the stormy seas of his rhythmic excursions.

With Dean and Howard preferring the free-jazz direction they were now unambiguously leaning toward in their interpretations of the repertoire, they found themselves on the opposite side of Hopper and Ratledge had been steering toward more through-composed structures from Third onwards. While Hopper and Ratledge would sometimes refer to Howard and Dean as ‘the dynamic duo’ the group now essentially sat in two opposing camps whose tension would ultimately pull the group apart. It was a situation that came to a head as the band entered Advision Studios to begin recording Fifth in November 1971 and in January 1972 Phil Howard formally left the band to be replaced by John Marshall. Four months later in May, Elton Dean also left the group, replaced by Karl Jenkins who would ultimately take Soft Machine in an entirely different direction.

Although Howard was only with the group for five months his playing had a huge impact on the band and audiences alike, creating a chaotic thrashing jazz with Howard at its tempestuous centre. First released in 2009 and long out of physical print, Drop's radio broadcast-sourced audio has now been beautifully restored and remastered by Mark Wingfield, making this rare recording of a full concert by this lineup one of the most exciting Soft Machine archive recordings to date. This is Soft Machine at its most acerbic, most radical, and most compelling.

MIKE RATLEDGE: Lowrey organ, Fender Rhodes electric piano
ELTON DEAN: saxello, alto sax, Fender Rhodes electric piano
HUGH HOPPER: bass guitar
PHIL HOWARD: drums