The Soft Machine-Land Of Cockayne (1981)

By the late seventies, Soft Machine had become a kind of sanctuary where some of the best and most venerable British musicians of the previous two decades, most of them free from contractual obligations, found refuge from the modern styles that were proliferating at the time. Still under the direction and guidance of the ever-present Karl Jenkins (keyboards) and John Marshall (drums and percussion), the group reached the magnitude of a supergroup formed by the most select cast of instrumentalists: Dick Morrissey (tenor saxophone), Alan Holdsworth (guitar), Alan Parker (rhythm guitar), John Taylor (Fender Rhodes), Jack Bruce (bass), and Ray Warleigh (alto saxophone and flute), in addition to vocalists Stu Calver, John Perry, Tony Rivers, and Bill Harman. With this astonishing lineup, they recorded Soft Machine's final album, "Land of Cockayne", which would simultaneously become their final epitaph at the very beginning of the eighties. This latest release is a delightful eclectic exercise in classic sounds, excellent jazz-funk, and jazz-rock, where the musicians are simply perfect, without any excesses or self-importance, extraordinarily cohesive, and solely focused on making music fluid and light music in which each contributes their unique virtuosity. Written and composed entirely by Jenkins, the album's tone is one of relaxed and enveloping exquisiteness, dominated more by melodic suggestion (which at times approaches symphonic structures) than by the improvisational excess typical of Soft Machine's previous work. Tracks like the Floydian "Over and Above" or the ambient "Lotus Groves" lead us to the short and orchestrated "Isle of the Blessed", a prelude to the jazz-fusion tracks "Panoramia", "Hot-Biscuit Slim", and "Sky Monkey", which are the highlights of one of the best jazz-rock albums of the eighties.