rayge
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Post by rayge on Feb 12, 2020 14:23:57 GMT
A Lothar and the Hand People – Machines
B Soft Machine Hazard Profile part 1
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Post by Deleted on Feb 12, 2020 16:46:29 GMT
A is coming from the same experimental hippie space as Zappa and Beefheart. It's quite an inventive and witty track, innovative too -you can hear the seeds of future music in it ( Devo or Talking Heads say). For all that, I can't say I particularly enjoyed it though, the full on vocal began to feel wearisome, the track's monotony suffocating. B took an age to load and I have to question whether it was worth it. Quite an interesting proto ambient opening soon morphed into deeply repetitive and turgid jazz rock. I lasted about three and half minutes.
So that's an A I guess
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Post by Deleted on Feb 12, 2020 16:53:30 GMT
Psychedelic band boards time machine, listens to too much music by The Knack, comes back and records song vs. repetitive jazz rock stylings ....Vote A, I guess..
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toomanyhatz
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Post by toomanyhatz on Feb 12, 2020 19:39:04 GMT
Lothar has always been my favorite of the proto-synth bands, they always had a pop sense, a sense of humor, and intelligence about moving forward rather than a pretension to futurism. Probably why they don't sound as dated now as even lots of 80s stuff.
I'm unclear what B has to do with machines, and even Ratledge's organ can't save this one from all the weedly-woo going on elsewhere. Soft Machine started to lose me with 4, here's pretty much where I tuned out for good...
That'd be an easy A.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 12, 2020 20:28:14 GMT
I'm unclear what B has to do with machines The clue's in the name Dave!!
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toomanyhatz
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Post by toomanyhatz on Feb 12, 2020 20:34:02 GMT
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toomanyhatz
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Post by toomanyhatz on Feb 12, 2020 20:53:59 GMT
Oh, Soft Machine, I get it!
I thought the idea was for the song or music to be the connection to machinery?
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Post by rayge on Feb 12, 2020 21:09:33 GMT
Oh, Soft Machine, I get it! I thought the idea was for the song or music to be the connection to machinery? It can be as tenuous as you like. This is far from the most out-there example.
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Post by Crunchy Col on Feb 12, 2020 21:22:43 GMT
I expected to hate B after reading the comments. And knowing it was the Softs without Wyatt, which is like an egg without a yolk. But the main riff wasn't terrible.
It's still bloody rubbish tho', especially all that wailing towards the end. What is the point of it all? ANYWAY - I thought we had no prog fans here, that this board was pretty much defined by the absence of this kind of overlong self-indulgent constipated smelly dickcheese! once this Cup is over I'll root out the tossers who are responsible for promoting this kind of po-faced crap and ban the fucking LOT
A is pretty cool, always liked it
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Post by Deleted on Feb 13, 2020 16:54:39 GMT
A
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Post by osgood on Feb 14, 2020 8:13:19 GMT
I played B first assuming I knew what to expect, but in the end it was better than I had anticipated. I've heard more tedious stuff from them, and there was a chance for it to get my vote ... until I played A, which I found one of the highlights of this round. I had not explored this band before and now I want more.
A
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Post by DarknessFish on Feb 14, 2020 20:56:59 GMT
A reminds me of the start of Floyd's "Money", but though it's all pretty silly and sung in a particularly irritating manner, it's quite sprightly, and not quite as annoying as I expected. Not enjoyable, but not as bad as to be expected from a band with a name like that.
I never made it past Soft Machine 2, there's such an obvious shift in style between 1 and 2, and it wasn't heading in a direction I wanted to travel in. Brave pick, whoever chose it must've known it would get a proper kicking, I just can't fathom a reason why anyone would choose to listen to this.
A
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Post by Deleted on Feb 15, 2020 13:58:07 GMT
A
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rayge
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Post by rayge on Feb 15, 2020 14:49:13 GMT
a Well, well, a Manfred Mann cover. L&tHP was a name I'd read from time to time in the 60s, without ever actually seeing one of their records in the shops - not even sure if they got a contemporary release over here, so this is probably the first time I've listened to them, 50 years after they broke up. I love the fact that the band is named after their theremin (rather than their keyboard player, as with MM), and themselves as its functionaries, thus prefiguring Echo and the Bunnymen by more than a decade (yes, I read the wikipedia entry - I always do if I know nothing about an act). What's that - oh yes, the record. I like the clip clop rhythm, but disappointed that Lothar isn't audible over the Moog and clanking (and kazoo?). Good stuff.
b I didn't like what I heard of Soft Machine even when they were supposed to be good, so I was tempted not to bother playing this, but started anyway for the sake of form. Starts promisingly with sheets of keyboard noise before the drum roll introduces the presumed main event of repetitive riffing. Two and a half minutes in, and nothing has changed to my inexpert ears. Oh, that section's over, the bassist gets three seconds, and now we're on to the lead guitar and the effects pedals, some pointless avant la lettre shredding in the Yngwie stylee. Five minutes in, and he's still doing it. Why, for dog's sake. Um, seven minutes. I'm guessing there's not going to be a vocal...Ah, the riffer's back, thank fuck for that. Thirty seconds of mild trans-Neptunian twinkling as a coda can't rescue it. I'm sure they are technically adept (as if that mattered to me), but they took near on nine minutes to say less than a bunch of New York proto-hippies managed to do in nine seconds. Five ugly men (have you seen that B&W shot of the band near the end?) wank enthusiastically, sometimes frenetically in a studio, and no-one actually comes. Not my thing, or indeed even close to any of my many things. More jazz-rock than prog to my way of listening, but still an abomination.
A
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fange
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Post by fange on Feb 15, 2020 20:24:02 GMT
B had a nice groove but i like A more.
A
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