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Soft Machine - NDR Jazz Workshop: Hamburg, Germany 1973 (2010) CD+DVD

Posted By: Designol

Date: 10 Oct 2023 19:36:08

Soft Machine were one of the very first groups to fuse Jazz with Rock in the late 60s and were hugely appreciated in Europe for their unique sound. This previously unreleased show was recorded for Germany's famous NDR Jazz Workshop series featuring the line-up of Mike Ratledge, Karl Jenkins, Roy Babbington and John Marshall with Art Themen and Gary Boyle. This long sought-after performance has never been seen since its original broadcast in 1973 and is the highest quality video document that exists of the group, featuring clear and beautiful visuals and superb live stereo sound!

Cuneiform tends to prefer Soft Machine’s earliest and “classic” lineups, so the label’s release of NDR Jazz Workshop: Hamburg, Germany 1973 might seem mysterious. The core group on this two-disc live CD/DVD package – Mike Ratledge (keyboards), Karl Jenkins (reeds/keyboards), Roy Babbington (bass), John Marshall (drums) – is often considered an also-ran in Softs history, appearing on the final CBS/Columbia outing Seven. Here, the band mainly plays music from the half-live/half-studio double-LP set Six. Bassist Hugh Hopper had just departed, replaced by Babbington, and sole original member Ratledge was beginning to split the writing duties roughly 50/50 with Jenkins. To some listeners, the idiosyncratic pleasures of early Soft Machine were fading away, replaced by a riff-based jazz-rock executed professionally but a bit too cleanly, lacking fire and sometimes just a tad too repetitive. Well, let’s not be too harsh – the emerging Jenkins could be a canny composer/arranger, with time signature quirks, a nice sense of melody and space, and instrumental voicings that made the Softs’ transition into their latter-day jazz-rock era appear nearly seamless. And if you need evidence that Soft Machine circa 1973 could indeed be a hot property, here it is. Yes, Cuneiform had strong reasons for releasing this. As noted in Aymeric Leroy’s liners, the German public broadcasting program’s audio and video quality is “superb,” and that’s not an overstatement (kudos to Udi Koomran for audio restoration and mastering). One might quibble about moments when a soprano sax is too low in the mix, but for the most part NDR Jazz Workshop is well balanced and crystal clear in both vision and sound. The cameras glide in smooth tracking shots around the band, and also linger where they should when each musician is in the spotlight, although sometimes (characteristic of the era) pulling in tight on a face and sticking around too long there (hello, razor stubble).

The CD and DVD, which generally replicate one another, are both divided into two parts, the second portion truly coming alive with the arrivals of guests Gary Boyle on guitar and Art Themen on tenor and soprano saxophones – Boyle’s fleet-fingered, jagged runs and Themen’s robust playing seem to fire up the others on jazz-rockers like the odd-metered “Stanley Stamp’s Gibbon Album” and groove-based “Gesolreut.” The latter is probably as funked up as the often cerebral Softs ever got, its central jam bracketed by a sax/keyboard riff that ends with an emphatic unison punch. Here played by the sextet, it’s stretched to nearly 12 minutes, almost double the length of the quartet version on Six, with a sound that’s more expansive, the band faster and more fluid beneath Boyle’s animated bursts and Themen’s buildup from clipped notes into extended phraseology and finally overblown upper-register squeals. Also nearly double the length of its studio incarnation (on the as-yet-unreleased Seven), “Down the Road” grooves more languidly, played here by the sextet but in audio form on the CD only. Short improvisational “Link” tracks nicely bridge the scored material, “Link 1” – like the “Chloe and the Pirates” intro – featuring Ratledge’s patented spacy keyboard loops echoing off into the ether. The most avant-garde moments arrive with the DVD audio-only “bonus” tracks. Hugh Hopper pays a visit on a 15-and-a-half-minute version of his ominous fuzzed-up stop-start tape loop piece “1983”; recording difficulties transformed this full-band experiment into essentially a Hopper-Marshall duet, but it still has its moments. “Encore Improvisation/Stumble Reprise” is 11 minutes of exploratory jamming, moving from free to funk to space before shifting abruptly to a brief slam-bang unison finale.

Review by Dave Lynch, Allmusic.com

Soft Machine at Allmusic
Soft Machine at Wiki

Tracklist:

01. Fanfare (0:47)
02. All White (3:38)
03. Link 1/Link 2 (5:04)
04. 37 1/2 (6:31)
05. Link 3 (0:47)
06. Riff (3:51)
07. Down The Road (10:41)
08. Link 3a (1:00)
09. Stanley Stamp's Gibbon Album (4:47)
10. Chloe And The Pirates (8:34)
11. Gesolreut (11:48)
12. E.P.V. (3:34)
13. Link 4 (3:37)
14. Stumble (6:56)
15. One Across (6:10)
16. Riff II (1:08)

EAC log

Exact Audio Copy V1.0 beta 3 from 29. August 2011

EAC extraction logfile from 15. December 2012, 9:59

Soft Machine / NDR Jazz Workshop - Hamburg, Germany 1973

Used drive : HL-DT-STBDDVDRW GBC-H20N Adapter: 1 ID: 0

Read mode : Secure
Utilize accurate stream : Yes
Defeat audio cache : Yes
Make use of C2 pointers : No

Read offset correction : 667
Overread into Lead-In and Lead-Out : No
Fill up missing offset samples with silence : Yes
Delete leading and trailing silent blocks : No
Null samples used in CRC calculations : Yes
Used interface : Native Win32 interface for Win NT & 2000

Used output format : User Defined Encoder
Selected bitrate : 1024 kBit/s
Quality : High
Add ID3 tag : No
Command line compressor : C:\Program Files\Exact Audio Copy\wavpack.exe
Additional command line options : -hm %source% %dest%

TOC of the extracted CD

Track | Start | Length | Start sector | End sector
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––-
1 | 0:00.00 | 0:47.36 | 0 | 3560
2 | 0:47.36 | 3:37.57 | 3561 | 19892
3 | 4:25.18 | 5:04.24 | 19893 | 42716
4 | 9:29.42 | 6:31.08 | 42717 | 72049
5 | 16:00.50 | 0:46.74 | 72050 | 75573
6 | 16:47.49 | 3:50.66 | 75574 | 92889
7 | 20:38.40 | 10:41.25 | 92890 | 140989
8 | 31:19.65 | 1:00.25 | 140990 | 145514
9 | 32:20.15 | 4:46.50 | 145515 | 167014
10 | 37:06.65 | 8:33.51 | 167015 | 205540
11 | 45:40.41 | 11:48.12 | 205541 | 258652
12 | 57:28.53 | 3:33.71 | 258653 | 274698
13 | 61:02.49 | 3:37.18 | 274699 | 290991
14 | 64:39.67 | 6:55.39 | 290992 | 322155
15 | 71:35.31 | 6:09.63 | 322156 | 349893
16 | 77:45.19 | 1:08.26 | 349894 | 355019

Range status and errors

Selected range

Filename I:\Music\Canterbury scene\Soft Machine\Soft.Machine-Discography.1968-2010.FLAC.CUE.Lossless\2 - Live\25 - NDR Jazz Workshop\Soft Machine - NDR Jazz Workshop - Hamburg, Germany 1973.wav

Peak level 100.0 %
Extraction speed 6.4 X
Range quality 100.0 %
Test CRC 38E9DA97
Copy CRC 38E9DA97
Copy OK

No errors occurred

AccurateRip summary

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Track 16 cannot be verified as accurate (confidence 2) [FFC77E45], AccurateRip returned [E4034FDE] (AR v2)

No tracks could be verified as accurate
You may have a different pressing from the one(s) in the database

End of status report

–– CUETools DB Plugin V2.1.3

[CTDB TOCID: 9b0HraHzCTsodsU6fTwpXonI6ys-] found, Submit result: database access error: The operation has timed out
[4da94c22] (5/5) Accurately ripped

==== Log checksum A9E02AA570269FE7A0417EFA006689998F505E853F9065D2CC0F99C80A1F61FE ====

AR log

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DR log

foobar2000 1.2 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1
log date: 2018-08-16 16:32:39

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Analyzed: Soft Machine / NDR Jazz Workshop - Hamburg, Germany 1973
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

DR Peak RMS Duration Track
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
DR10 -0.50 dB -12.71 dB 0:47 01-Part I: Fanfare
DR11 -0.50 dB -11.93 dB 3:38 02-Part I: All White
DR10 -0.50 dB -12.50 dB 5:04 03-Part I: Link 1/Link 2
DR9 -0.50 dB -10.75 dB 6:31 04-Part I: 37Ѕ
DR9 -2.14 dB -14.33 dB 0:47 05-Part I: Link 3
DR10 -0.50 dB -11.27 dB 3:51 06-Part I: Riff
DR8 0.00 dB -9.73 dB 10:41 07-Part Ii: Down The Road
DR9 -1.47 dB -16.69 dB 1:00 08-Part Ii: Link 3A
DR10 -0.50 dB -11.17 dB 4:47 09-Part Ii: Stanley Stamp's Gibbon Album
DR10 -0.50 dB -12.86 dB 8:34 10-Part Ii: Chloe And The Pirates
DR9 -0.50 dB -10.92 dB 11:48 11-Part Ii: Gesolreut
DR10 -0.50 dB -14.35 dB 3:34 12-Part Ii: E.P.V.
DR10 -0.50 dB -12.72 dB 3:37 13-Part Ii: Link 4
DR10 -0.50 dB -11.31 dB 6:56 14-Part Ii: Stumble
DR13 -0.50 dB -16.10 dB 6:10 15-Part Ii: One Across
DR9 -0.64 dB -14.43 dB 1:08 16-Part Ii: Riff Ii
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

Number of tracks: 16
Official DR value: DR10

Samplerate: 44100 Hz
Channels: 2
Bits per sample: 16
Bitrate: 877 kbps
Codec: FLAC
================================================================================

DVD Tracklist:

01. Fanfare
02. All White
03. Link 1
04. The Soft Weed Factor
05. Link 2
06. 37 1/2
07. Link 3
08. Riff
09. Stanley Stamp's Gibbon Album
10. Chloe and the Pirates
11. Gesolreut
12. E.P.V.
13. Link 4
14. Stumble
15. One Across
16. Riff II

All thanks to original releaser

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