Breda Reactor

This must have been an amazing concert, and the sound is really very good for what I believe was an amateur recording. You may not want this if you are an audiophile and insist on studio sound quality, but for anyone else it should prove very enjoyable.Highly recommended to all SM fans, not merely completists!

Your post: Jul 25, 2014 6:10:20 AM PDTRichard House says:I'm a big Softs fan, starting from Softs 3, which was my first experience of the band as a spotty youth in the early '70s. Ratledge's playing has always captivated me, and at this gig he was just incendiary - probably the most passionate, inventive and spiritual organ/keyboard work I've ever heard. It's worth buying for the genius and virtuosity of Mike Ratledge alone; but the rest of this excellent-value 2 CD set is also excellent - possibly the band at its all-time peak. When music has the rare combination of qualities I just mentioned, the sound quality just doesn't matter - well not for me anyway; the matchless quality and emotional intensity come across loud and clear. Very highly recommended - and by no means merely for completists.Richard HouseStroud, UK

This, like Noisette, is a rare recording of the brief lived quintet version of this incredible band. It is a great performance and to my well trained ears is adequately recorded. No, it's not a perfect recording but it sure isn't some bootleg of a dude hiding a tape recorder in his jacket in the balcony. All of the instruments are present and can be heard clearly with the drums being a bit distant in comparison to the others. It sounds like a soundboard recording and it's a great gig. If you're looking to venture into some Soft Machine live shows get Backwards and Noisette first, they are all time classics. And then, I'd actually reccommend getting this release before Virtually and maybe even Middle Earth Masters. If you love Soft Machine from this era then don't think twice this an essential slice of SM history circa 1970! Pretty timeless!

Not sure if this disk delivers anything such albums as noisette or backwards don't from the standpoint of music, but the recording quality is pretty bad by my standards.I read that the voiceprint soft machine recordings are pretty crabby, so I always steered clear from them. However, I also read somewhere that this one is better than most, so I decided to give it a chance.I couldn't really sit thru the whole thing...and just to let the reader understand where I am coming from - I do have realistic expectations from never before released live archives from 30-something years ago. For example "live in paris" , while mono and not top notch quality, is quite enjoyable in my opinion.Had I known what I was getting, I would never have paid $23 for this CD. Noisette is much better and it is cheaper as well. To say even more, for some reason voiceprint cd's tend to generally be more expensive than those from cuneiform. I wonder why.That said, I certainly recommend this disk to those who are desperate to hear a different variation of noisette.

This is a good document of the Dobson-era Soft Machine, recorded on January 31 1970. Pluses are: (1) if you like Mike Ratledge’s playing then you will get your fill here, and (2) the album includes an entire concert (unlike ‘Noisette’, which was recorded in Croydon a few weeks earlier but which excludes Facelift, as part of that track was included on the ‘Third’ album). A big minus for me is that the saxes in ‘Breda Reactor’ often do not come over very clearly and, when they do come through the mix, do not have much subtlety in tone (in other words, they tend to squawk). The liner notes explain why this is so, but I think ‘Noisette’ managed to get around this problem to a greater extent.

If you've ever liked the Softs, this is a "must have" for your collection - Ratledge is quite incomparable. Oh how I wish McLaughlin had hired him for the first Mahavishnu Orchestra (or rather, that we could have split him in two, because of course we wouldn't want him to have left the Softs).Richard House, Winchester

As described thanks.

初期ソフトマシーンの魅力をこのライヴアルバムを聴けば十二分に堪能できます。