Third

Un monton de cosas tiradas al azar

Es wabert so dahin. Die Tracklängen von 15-20 Minuten sind interessant. Zumal innerhalb der Tracks abgeschlossene Einheiten sind. Ein Konzept hat sich mir beim anhören nicht erschlossen. Am Ende bleiben ein paar Fragezeichen, was uns die Künstler damit sagen wollten. 2/5

4,5 stars

This was a very tough listen. Clearly not for me.

i'm impressed by how subtle and lowkey this album is. i expected something a bit more freaky and abrasive but this is meditative, man. probably thanks to Robert Wyatt. Moon In June has a beautiful lo-fi thing going on too. had a great time with this one. deserves to be one of the 1001? yeah

Have to be in the mood

Kinda cool. Pretty wild, unique. Dig it.

meh

2.5. The long song album thing is rough for me to listen to. It feels samey the entire time.

Interesting... I've never heard of this before. It's essentially a very jazzy prog rock album with four 20-minute long songs, 3 of which are instrumental. While they are fairly interesting musically, they don't really manage to hold the listener over their runtime. Even the sole vocal track, "Moon in June", fails to really justify its absurd length. This is not a bad album, but it's difficult to sit through because of the extended length of the songs.

Hmm, okay.

Cool

Album No. 0217 on my list. I had been vaguely aware of Soft Machine and that they were a prog rock band, but I'm quite sure that I had never listened to their music, so "Third" was completely new to me. When I saw that the album only contained four songs, I already expected them to be quite long in return. And what can I say, these songs *are* long. 18 minutes plus each, that's really something unique. To be honest though, these insane lengths are really what I'll remember the most about the album. Because the thing is: I have a certain sweet spot for prog rock, but in this case, the length kinda muddies the overall cohesiveness and catchiness of the songs. It may be an unfair comparison, but "Third" makes it quite clear why Pink Floyd's "The Dark Side Of The Moon" has had such a lasting commercial success: both albums sound pretty good; on both albums, no one can deny that the musicians really know their instruments, and both albums have these really interesting parts. Yet, TDSOTM compresses these features into a coherent set of perfectly timed songs. This leanness is what's lacking on "Third": the tunes are fine, there is a lot of cool jazzy stuff in this; these songs just feel sooo overly extensive. Again, the comparison to arguably the greatest rock album of all time may not be fair, and the intentions of Soft Machine on "Third" certainly were different ones. Yet, I'm just having a hard time listening to this because the songs lack so much dynamism. Again: fine musicians, interesting ideas, just a lack of willingness to form something coherent and somewhat more accessible. I will add "Moon In June" to my playlist, because it spoke to me the most. 2/5 stars.

A little misled because this feels more free jazz than prog rock. Not my favorite but also never boring which is an improvement from others on the list

4 songs for a long album. But it was eh

I like the first two albums by this band better than this one. It’s still an amazing album but, I see why people would prefer listening to something else. It’s one of those albums that a person has to devote their time to sit down and listen.

Sublime.

1. 4 2. 4.5 3. 3.5 4. 4

Eh. 3 is generous. Closer to 2

man, what a weird album. it has a lot of the ingredients that should annoy me (even though i love prog). but i find myself giving the album another go because i can't quite grasp it, only to find myself ending the album more than an hour later without thinging anything special at all. it just flows on smoothly without getting in the way. what a feat for a prog album! well, i like it a lot, i think?

Great album to listen to while working

I suspect I’m more forgiving of 𝘛𝘩𝘪𝘳𝘥’s eccentricities than some listeners, simply because experimental rock is familiar territory for me. Soft Machine certainly tests that tolerance right from the start. The opening of 𝗙𝗮𝗰𝗲𝗹𝗶𝗳𝘁 sounds almost deliberately designed to scare people away. Give it some time, though, and the music gradually becomes surprisingly absorbing. And if that opening hasn't frightened you off, the track list might: four pieces, each running for roughly eighteen or nineteen minutes. Not exactly an invitation to casual listening. Fortunately, I rather enjoy this kind of musical exploration. Jazz, improvisation, psychedelia, and progressive rock blend into something unpredictable, with the band occasionally wandering so far from conventional song structures that the distinction between jazz and rock almost disappears. Not every minute is equally fascinating, but I rarely mind the detours. 𝘛𝘩𝘪𝘳𝘥 is demanding, adventurous, and wonderfully eccentric. A fine example of the Canterbury scene, where musical boundaries seem to matter very little. Not exactly easy listening, but that's part of why I like it.

i think this would be fine for moments when you need background noise without paying much attention. i think i would have liked this better if i put this on when doing work. i made the mistake of putting this on at the gym, so that was a bit of a drag.

"Third" is a turd

Yup.

Ehhh

This is a practical joke, right?

Early Jazz rock, skip the first track

I'm sure it's someone's thing but it's not mine

I think this is a little too pretentious. amazing sounding considering when it was recorded, and undeniably creative, but just a little aimless at times and a lot of the songs don’t lead to much

4 låtar om totalt 2 timmar, redan där anar man att detta blir jobbigt. Mycket riktigt. Första låten är ett hot mot det mänskliga örat. Dom som uppskattar den är antingen så sjukt fullproppad med droger eller så har dom svåra mentala problem. Låt 2 blir något bättre. Vissa partier är t.o.m. lyssningsbara. Överlag är det dock fortfarande kasst. Låt 3 fortsätter på samma sätt som låt 2. Jag behöver inte döda någon för att lyssna vidare, men fortfarande är det helt värdelöst. När jag kommer till låt 4 kommer det bästa med hela albumet. Spotify har räknat fel och samtliga låtar är "bara" 18-19 minuter långa, så det rör sig om ca. 1h och 15 minuter. Låt fyra fortsätter i samma spår och cementerar det jag insåg från början. Detta är endast musik för inbördes beundran. De idioter som hävdar att detta är ett album av 1001 st man MÅSTE lyssna på innan man dör är så jävla snett ute att dom inte insett vad musik är. Min fru sa en bra sak under tiden vi lyssnade. Det måste vara musiklärare till små nybörjarbarn som tycker att detta låter bra, ungefär som när ungarna spelar.

A lot of mixed feelings here. The parts of this album I liked, I REALLY loved. The electronic and noise portions, especially in the first track, are really something special. If the whole album was like that it would have been an easy 5. The jazz was... decent? If I wanted to listen to jazz, there are people who could do it better. And the more "rock" portions I kind of just wanted to get through. Hated the vocals and the lyricism. 3/4 songs being good sounds great until you realise the one song that sucks is TWENTY MINUTES. I would never put this music on any of my playlists, but that's the nature of a lot of these albums. All things considered, I liked this more than I didn't like it.

Boring jazz rock record that just kind of keeps spinning its wheels for 75 minutes straight without any real interesting aspects. Shrug worthy at its best

this is great, reminds me a lot of Traffic from the same period, though I can't find any real common threads between the two. 4/5.

I'm taking the advice of the guy in the comments who said not to listen to the first track first. I think this is a pretty smooth sound to it. And I like the variation. It's alright, it's nothing that really blew me away. I think this list has better albums that go for what this album is going for. I'm happy enough to listen to a lengthy track. I do think you start to feel a drag in the last track. I'm not really sure what it is. I think it's maybe the lack of consistency with musical ideas across the album. I just feel like the individual songs. Don't have like a point. They come back to they just continue with different variations, and it becomes almost a bit taxing, I think? I'm not really sure it's hard to describe what doesn't work for me in this album, but I think it just comes down to maybe I just don't really like the vibe it's going for. Fav Track: Slightly all the Time

Tää pehmiskone ei tuottanut sellaista saundia mikä olisi puhutellut meikäläistä. ⭐️⭐️

3/5

Jazz rock album. It’s 4 twenty minute songs basically. The arrangements are good, I mostly enjoyed it. Not really driving around music due to its length.

Good to read to for a bit then I realised just how long it is. Saved a song: N RYM: N

this album has a lot of aura for me but it'll still need to grow on me a bit

What a bunch of dissonant racket!

Catfish fishing, making pasta from scratch and this album: three things that involve a lot of noodling

Verrückte Platte. War mir beim ersten Durchgang nicht sicher, ob ich überhaupt auf 3 Sterne komme. Nach dem zweiten Durchgang hab ich dagegen überlegt, ob ich sogar 5 Sterne vergeben soll. Ist halt ne Prog-Rock-Band, die beschlossen hat, Jazz zu spielen. Das klingt dann schon deutlich verkopfter als die Jazz-Platten, die hier zuletzt in den 1001 kamen. Wenn man sich damit arrangieren kann, dann kann man hier schon einiges rausziehen. Selbst die Songs, die mir am Anfang befremdlich vorkamen, haben mich dann mit gewissen Parts irgendwann doch bekommen. Allerdings schafft es kaum ein Lied, seine Spannung über die gesamte Laufzeit zu halten. Zwischendurch ist schon einiges an unnötigen Drone-Passagen enthalten, die mir wenig geben. Der Gesang bei Song 3 kam überraschend und zeigt die Wurzeln der Band auf, auch wenn der Song dann irgendwann stilistisch wieder ganz woanders landet. Hätte ich mir sonst vermutlich nie angehört und bin sehr überrascht, wie sehr mich das doch z. T. mitgenommen hat.

Ich will nicht mehr, ich kann nicht mehr...hört mir endlich auf mit JAZZ!!!

Es war abwechselnd, dass ich die Lieder spannend fand. Zu Beginn hat mich das Album um mein Interesse bekommen, aber Slightly all the time fand ich dann richtig uninteressant. Moon in June hat wieder Hoffnung gemacht, um mit Out-Bloody-Rageous Tendenz langweilig zu werden. Ein sehr zwie gespaltenes Bild, dass in der Tendenz und auf Dauer vermutlich weniger relevant für mich wird.

Das ist das zweit schlimmste was ich hier bislang hören musste

A double album... Jazz. Unfortunately I was born without the jazz appreciation gene so this to me is just noodling without much connection. The only saving grace is that the second disc of this double album is not available on Spotify. Oh how I cheered. I didn't even consider searching for the second disc

What if Kraftwerk took a swing at doing a jazz album, but then scrapped the idea and tossed the recordings out. The tracks meaner aimlessly, trying to start, but just never do. Each track is like an 18 minute intro to something that never starts.

if i went to a psychologist right after listening to this album i'd probably get diagnosed with anxiety. this is a great example of the range of jazz actually bc this was on my backlog so i randomly picked this today. today happening to be when i got jimmy smith - back at the chicken shack (1963) and ... yeah that's a contrast. i didn't even know this was jazz so that's a coincidence. jimmy smith is a great option for jazz that's listenable, kinda twee maybe, but not too inane. it's active and maintains interest. is it the most musically interesting music on the planet? no, but it's good. this, on the other hand, is all over the place. at times it's like a shredding hard rock guitar solo turned into esoteric jazz, and at other times it's a classical flute solo turned into esoteric jazz. (and i haven't even gotten through track one yet.) it has that sloooooow 18min building drone in the background. the sax is super squeaky. probably a soprano sax? oh i FUCKING HATE that electronic distortion at the end of track one that's a hard no i am not finishing this album.

Way too long

This list have brought up albums I’m not familiar with, and some like this that I knew about but had never felt it was for me. And it isn’t, there are parts I really enjoyed but generally it’s a bit too jazz and a bit too noodly for me. On the opening track it’s sounds like a clumsy ghost lost in a music shop and while it does have more form later on, it never has quite enough 2.4 stars

honestly the ads that played between the songs were a nice reprieve from the actual songs. probably not a great sign for me. I am not musically adept enough to appreciate it, and I don't want to be.

I’d give this a four if it weren’t for the vocals. Geez U Peets

I am a bit of a sucker for these prog experiments. I know they sound terrible, I know what they created can be recreated even better today, but man I’m a sucker for some analog funkiness that sounds like you are playing a classical music score following jazz improv structure while using rock (or just) wrong instruments. It tickles my ears in a good way.

Brandon, I liked it! I swear to God, I liked it!

What did they do, run the final mix through a potato? Is prog better or worse without vocals? Probably better, but only marginally! Is this worse as prog...or jazz? I don't hate it, but I know there's better jazz and, I hope and pray, better prog. Cascading polyrhythmic e-piano in the last song is cool! There are also several long stretches of silence that had me checking to see if my Air Pods disconnected...so that's fun too!

1068 - "Here's your juice box and orange slice. Thanks for coming."

I wish it was Soft Cell.

It's hard to be too enthusiastic about this as it's so formless and drawn-out. You're not exactly listening to 3 minute, well-crafted pop songs; it's nearly 20 minutes of experimental, proggy, jazz-fusion noodling for every track. It's weird and a lot of it IS bollocks - but it's not unpleasant, and I may even stretch to 'fairly nice' at times. His voice is kind of hilariously weird, but as with his solo albums I kind of dig it. 2.5 rounded up.

This is some boring ass elevator music.

I can appreciate the uniqueness here and these guys can really jam. When they are going in, it's fun. But the reality is that the structure is just a little too loose. There's too much down time and filler packed into these 20+ minute songs. I'm all about long songs if it feels like they are going somewhere. This instead feels like just some dudes playing instruments for an extended period of time.

Tredjelåta er ikke like kul som de andre.

Spor 1 var en kjip start, men den tok seg kraftig opp. Tidvis veldig kul, men alt for lang og pretensiøs.

Grei bakgrunnsmusikk.

Not bad but not my thing, too much like Jazz

I liked it. Casual bit of rock jazz.

Jazz Rock.

interesting but challenging listen

I understand why this would be considered important, groundbreaking, and cool. I can see how someone could get into it with more listens or with the right mood. But I probably won't. Not for me. Sorry.

Oh wow! This is terrible, it’s just self indulgent pretentious muck. Prog Rock and I guess jazz fusion is what you get here and it’s torture to the ears. This is the kind of album that I don’t understand how this is on the list but other ones are not Another waste of my listening time.

The first two jazzy instrumental tracks are pretty hard to get through. The third song has vocals. Surprise! Your drunk uncle has grabbed the mic at a wedding and is making up a song on the spot, babbling nonsense lyrics like, “Singing a song in the morning/ singing a song at night / Don’t even know what I’m singing about / But it makes me feel alright”. And your drunk uncle has a terrible head cold so his voice is quite thin and strained, and also he can’t hit any of the notes he’s aiming for. So the bride’s family try to drag him off stage and the band don’t know what to do so they play an outro hoping he’ll leave but he WON’T GO, and the outro lasts for 3 FULL MINUTES as it takes several people to drag him away. So that’s the 3rd song. Then there’s one more song of noisy jazzy nonsense, and thankfully it’s over. What is this album? Why is it here?

If i could give it 0 I would

Álbum con una tremenda complejidad musical y un virtuosismo sofocante, todos en la banda tocan impresionante y se dan el lujo de experimentar en varios momentos, ya sea con la mezcla de Jazz y Rock Progresivo del álbum volcandose más al Free Jazz o a jugar con atmósferas de sintetizadores, creo que la batería es lo que más me gustó de todos los virtuosos que tocan en el álbum, que es imparable. A pesar de todas las cosas buenas que dije antes, el álbum no es tan consistente con sus 4 canciones, el tema de apertura es el peor de todos y en los otros tres hay partes que son la gloria y otras que esperas que terminen, aún así es un álbum que si te interesa el Progresivo y el Jazz Fusión es una escucha obligatoria.

This just isn’t for me. I’m not really into instrumental or should I say mostly instrumental anwyay as there was some vocals in this, which I also wasn’t keen on. Iv heard worse albums, I didn’t think this was terrible. I just found myself quite bored by the vast majority.

Interesting. Jazz rock. I liked it best in the first song. The rest are nice, but softer. But where the guitars accompanied, I really liked. That's why I rate it over 3. 3,5/5.

Not for me. Had a few tolerable sections but I mostly just wanted it to be over.

Listened to 3 mins. Too weird

I have no patience with this, but seeing as it is - technically - music it avoids 1.

Slightly all the time was good, Moon in June was horrible

It's too long by half but there's some good stuff in the middle...do I like jazz??

I definitely enjoyed this. The first track was great, but it was definitely the weakest of the bunch. The rest of the album has quite a typical Prog and Jazz Fusion theme that was intriguing, but didn't blow me away. By the end of the album, I had had enough, but it's surprising quite how entertaining this is for an album that lasts over an hour - most albums start dragging much earlier!

I'd probably say this intrigued me rather than grabbed me. A band that explicitly said they wanted to sound different from their contemporaries and did not want a guitarist (despite seeming to have one). They at least succeeded in the former with their mix of jazz based psychedelic rock. It's never going to be easy to asses a 75 minute album with 4 'songs' all of nearly 20 mins each, on your first listen. It's going to need time and effort but it certainly gave me enough to be interested in giving it that.

odličan album želim zahvaliti stranici što mi je ovo predstavila. divan album, savršena mješavina džeza i prog-rocka, ako se ovo uopće može tako odrediti. odmah nakon ovog preslušao sam i drugi njihov album, koji mi se također svidio, ali ne ko ovo remek-djelo

Thought this was going to be some drone thing but it turned out to be jazz rock fusion made by British people :(

An album for those who wish to be educated by their music, Third is a challenging listen, replete with atonality, free-form time signatures, and what appears to be improvised singing. Recommended for the music theory student.

Still more obscure English groups…this one is a double album, with only one track on each of the four sides. The music is jazz/rock, and probably was ahead of its time back in 1970. It seemed a bit disjointed to me, and there were a few sections that were annoying.

I suppose 4 artists I've heard of in a row would be too much to ask. Back to another British band from the 70s I've never heard of! At least they're a new genre... prog jazz. (silent screaming) To be fair, prog jazz is better than prog non-jazz, but still worse than non-prog jazz and also worse than 60 other genres. Ah well, what can you do. Somehow they played at the BBC Proms (in 1970); glad I wasn't around for that one! Okay... actually, this album gets better as it goes along, or maybe I'm just sleepier. 1 is the worst track, then 2, then 3, and then by 4 I was like "wait, do I like this?". Was gonna give it a 2 but I'll bump it up to a 3 for the growth arc.

Listened previously. Expectations: High - Verdict: Great - This album takes rock into places it hadn't been before. The free jazz influence is very obviously right from the beginning but the sound is incredibly heavy and dirty. When the structure kicks in a little more in Facelift there is a real driving energy. Slightly All The Time has a loping bassline that gives a solid foundation for the other instruments to vamp and dance around over. The vocals in Moon In June give the track a very different feel and definitely brings the album closer to the prog realm as opposed to the jazz fusion that it has been operating in. The intro of Out-Bloody-Rageous is great and then when the band kicks in it has fantastic momentum and feels so agile. The closer might be the highlight for me, although it is tough to pick. Brilliant album from start to finish.

Not sure who this is for...but it is not me.

Describing these guys as an "english rock band" is wildly misleading. First track was long and a bit difficult but the album started to come together after that for me. Feels like Miles Davis meets King Crimson. The live recording definitely adds to the sound, I feel like seeing them live in a small venue would have been craaazy. Cool discovery, looking forward to giving this album another spin eventually, feel like it probably improves the more familiarity to get with it

This fits somewhere between avant-garde jazz and prog rock and is fully experimental in nature, which I absolutely loved. My only gripe is his singing on Moon in June. I am all for an unconventional singer and have no issues with the stream of consciousness lyrics, but this wasn’t a gravelly Tom Waits or a nasally Bob Dylan or even a lispy Isaac Brock. It was just tuneless and not enjoyable to listen to.

Not for me. Some of it is very hard objectively to listen to and then a lot of it is just boring.

Prog rock, British jazz fusion. To quote one of the very few Brits I respect, Roy Kent (yes, I know he's a fictional character written by Americans): fuuuuuuuck.

I will never understand prog rock like this and I'm not sorry about it.

Out-Bloody-Rageous

What in the fuck was Track 1? Start at about 10 minutes in. Track 2 is ok but meh. I gave up. 1/5.

Soft Machine's aptly titled third album is tailor made soundtrack for drug induced journeys. For everyone else these are 13 to 20 minute long jams that meander and wind on top of themselves, sometimes with no coherent rhyme or reason. As such, add a full point if you're supplied for the trip.

Got better with time

34

First track can fuck off. The rest is passable prog rock. Nothing that blows my mind, but not terrible.