Third (Soft Machine album)
Third is the third studio album by the rock band Soft Machine, originally released in 1970 as a double LP, with each side of the original vinyl consisting of a single suite without individual track titles. "Third" marks the most major of Soft Machine's several shifts in musical genre over their career, completing their transition from psychedelic music to jazz, and is a significant milestone of the Canterbury scene. It was their first album with saxophonist Elton Dean. Lyn Dobson appears on saxophone and flute on "Facelift", recorded while he was a full member of  the band (then a quintet), although he is credited as an additional performer. Jimmy Hastings (brother of Pye Hastings from Caravan) makes substantial contributions on flute and clarinet on "Slightly All the Time", free-jazz violinist Rab Spall (then a bandmate of Wyatt's in the part-time ensemble Amazing Band) is heard on the coda to "Moon in June", and Nick Evans (a member of the band during its short-lived septet incarnation) makes brief appearances on trombone in "Slightly All the Time" and "Out-Bloody-Rageous". Recording. The original release of "Third" had an unpolished sound quality, including  tape hiss on the live recordings and abrupt editing. "Slightly All the Time" and "Out-Bloody-Rageous" are the most straightforward tracks on the album, representing the jazz-rock sound that would be explored further on subsequent albums. Reception. According to Paul Stump's "The Music's All that Matters: A History of Progressive Rock", "Third" was "unanimously acclaimed as the band's zenith." A retrospective review in "Allmusic" praised the exotic instrumentation and fusion of genres, and concluded, "Not exactly rock, "Third" nonetheless pushed the boundaries of rock into areas previously unexplored, and it managed to do so without  sounding self-indulgent. A better introduction to the group is either of the first two records, but once introduced, this is the place to go." In the Q & Mojo Classic Special Edition "Pink Floyd & The Story of Prog Rock" (2005), the album came #20 in its list of "40 Cosmic Rock Albums". Reissues. In 2007, the album was re-issued on CD by Sony BMG with a second disc comprising a complete live album, "Live at the Proms 1970", which had been previously released by a small independent company called Reckless Records in 1988. This album was recorded at The  BBC Proms in the Royal Albert Hall on 13 August 1970. The band's performance, in the second half, following the BBC Symphony Orchestra in the first, marked the first time that a popular-music band played at the classical festival. The disparity of Soft Machine's concert as compared to the hall's usual fare is explained by Robert Wyatt on the Reckless album's liner notes: We was invited by Tim Souster, who had an evening using the hall to do what he liked with. I believe he'd heard our second LP, asked us on the strength  of that. He discovered us on the way to discovering Motown. Via the Who, I think. Anyway it was brave of him to invite us despite the withering contempt of the posh music establishment. Before our bit, I went out the back for a quick fag and then the doorman didn't want to let me back in. "I've got to play in there", I said. "You must be kidding, son", he said, "they only have proper music in there". Not that night they didn't. "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 LP.) Both discs were re-mastered for  the re-issue, improving the sound quality significantly.