Robert Wyatt: Classic or Dud?

Really feeling The Hapless Child. Carla is a superstar on this.

Mantler's The School of Understanding (recorded in 1996) mainly features Wyatt on "Understanding," where he's the Guest Observer, riding into a language school on what might be a baby elephant or lofty llama, but is listed as Don Preston's syndrums, which I'd thought only made little pooty sounds, so even more education. Too ba
Too bad Wyatt and the syndrums only come in once, but the whole thing's pretty listenable; I especially like when other voices address the refugee student. Woman: "You are a victim, you have suffered so much---you must go." A guy: "What you have suffered is inconceivable." Meanwhile, Alien Girl remembers: "Don't think about it, go to work..it's a long walk through the war, bits and pieces." (Mantler wrote all the words for once, so far turning out at least as well as settings for his literary heroes.)

Digital drums appear once on Mantler's 2000 settings of Paul Auster's words,Hide and Seek (though tuned percussion brings constant and welcome companionship to co-stars RW and Susi Hyldgaard, compatible with Wyatt's own turns on xpost Silence---come to think of it, Preston's syndrums fit the feel of Wyatt's real kit of yore. This anomalous sound may be what's alarming the couple---he: "Have you, no-oh-ticed---?" she: "Yes! Yes! Yes!" "Have you any ideas?" "Yes, I'm going to scream." "When are you going to do it?" "Right Now!"
That's when the whole thing bumps up the word interest, which had previously been mostly Deep Thought mulch for granular melody and rhythm, vocal and instrumental. The final stretch develops circular and spiraling conversations (briefly) from repeated phrases---he: "I don't denyyy..." she: "What?" "Anything." "That's very clever of you." "I'm glad we agree." together/overlapping "I'm glad you're glad." Ho-ho well it sounds good, and yeah several more keepers for the deep fan mix.

So this popped up as a new release today.

https://open.spotify.com/album/1coZVDci03VoLGBtWzwjxS?si=8u8iWq8xSpaSnY6BZ7shaA

Audience Recording of the North Sea Radio Orchestra show with John Greaves and Annie Barbazza and Fred Frith as special guests At Cafe Oto 27 June 2019, presenting the Dark Companion album FOLLY BOLOLEY - Songs from Robert Wyatt's Rock Bottom. (plus other songs)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tt18LIAGNys&fbclid=IwAR22tc5DlrxwIqCRao9Ewkcb0zvCTk-hrEuK6UD4UMSkW66dPokmT7kizig

Oh well, search for Folly Bololey At Cafe Oto 27 June 2019

i'm not usually into these kinda things but this is really good https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4CS1SPrwOv4

live recording is great too. thanks for sharing

there is some slanderous bullshit at the beginning of this thread

haha yes

"I've heard very little of Wyatt's music thus far, but....................."

This is NOT a Covid-19 Revive. He's fine, far as I know (no news is good enough news, esp. these days).

Just came here to say that I have finally listened to 2013 Cuneiform release '68.
Track list and personnel from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%2768_(album)#Personnel

All tracks are written by Robert Wyatt, except where noted.

No. Title Length
1. "Chelsa" (Kevin Ayers, Wyatt) 5:00
2. "Rivmic Melodies" 18:19
3. "Slow Walkin' Talk" (Brian Hopper) 3:02
4. "Moon in June" 20:36
Personnel
Robert Wyatt – vocals, piano, electric piano, Hammond organ, bass guitar, drums, percussion
Jimi Hendrix – bass guitar (track 3)
Hugh Hopper – bass guitar (track 4)
Mike Ratledge – Lowrey organ (track 4)

excerpts, incl. useful background breakdown from
https://cuneiformrecords.bandcamp.com/album/68:

"The missing links in my life's work, no less!" – Robert Wyatt

"Cuneiform has delivered a Holy Grail with Robert Wyatt's '68 ... The sound on '68 is excellent; it was painstakingly cleaned up and remastered from original sources, making this a must for any Wyatt, Soft Machine, or prog head. The booklet also contains a lengthy interview with Wyatt by Aymeric Leroy with comments from Hopper. All killer, no filler." – Thom Jurek/All Music Guide

,,,,In September, 1968, the Soft Machine had just finished their second, exhaustive tour of the USA supporting the Jimi Hendrix Experience. At the conclusion of the tour, vocalist/drummer/multi-instrumentalist Robert stayed, working on recordings in Hollywood and New York City. Upon Robert's return to England to re-start the Soft Machine in December, 1968, these documents lay forgotten. Two of them were eventually found and issued, but half of these recordings were unreleased and thought lost forever...

Now, for the first time, all four of the recordings Robert made in '68 are collected together and released, all carefully worked on and presented in the best possible sound quality – and the recorded sound here is surprisingly excellent overall!

This release is fully authorized by Robert and the liners include an in-depth interview with Robert about his recollections of this period, with insights into his songwriting process, recording procedures and previously untold anecdotes of this period of his work and life.

There are four tracks. Two of the demos are shorter songs. Of these, one of them was a track Robert used to play with the Wilde Flowers, Brian Hopper's Slow Walkin' Talk, while the other features music that would later be re-worked by Robert and appear on the 1st album by Matching Mole!

The bulk of the material - the two long suites - were later re-recorded by the Soft Machine; Rivmic Melodies later became the basis of side one on Volume II (1969) and Moon In June showed up as Robert's showcase on Third (1970). The two side-long epics are particularly worth noting how they present, even in this very early stage of his career, Wyatt's seamless integration of song fragments and instrumental passages within a unified whole, his stream-of-consciousness, often self-referential lyrics interspersed with witty asides (soon to become a defining characteristic of the 'Canterbury scene'), matched by Wyatt's equally idiosyncratic singing.
These tracks serve as a template for the post-psychedelic Soft Machine's career as founders of European jazz/rock and the entire release is a precursor to Robert's post-band, solo career...

... oh fuck, don't do that to me, I thought we'd lost another one!

same!

I know! It's unavoidable, but I had to revive, sorry!
The whole album is streamable on that bandcamp page.
I haven't yet done any comparative listening, but Jimi sounds great, ditto guest Softs, and this pulled all of them and me right along through recombinant artpoprock mosaic momentum, breadcrumbs of sound and vision and life lived jumping out often enough: "She's learning to hate, but it's already too late, for meeee," she's pulling him along too.
(Isn't there some guitar in this "Moon In June," or is that something from the keys?)

lol same fear here

thanks for the writeup, that one's on my list to get but it's a long list.

Now for all the streamable tracks from Cuneiform's live Matching Mole and Wyatt-era Soft Machine finds on bandcamp. I may be some tyme.

starting with live 1967 Soft Machine set:
https://cuneiformrecords.bandcamp.com/album/middle-earth-masters
Notes:
Sample tracks are satisfying and tantalizing, in equal measure. Start with subset of mellow urgency, incl. wages of pleasure: boy sends the invite, but doesn't get the memo: "She pulled out a gun, screaming 'You're Dreaming," but wouldn't it be nice---closer to Velvets than Floyd w such lyrics, Ayers' rhythm guitar & bass, the subtle, prismatic pressure of Ratledge's sunshine sustain---RW mainly offering otminimal harmonies and drums---until he rakes his tonsils across the top of "Hope For Happiness," raw as Ayers' guitar was on "Bossa Nova Express," and now Ratledge leads the splay though free postboogie, differently-morphous: not dated atall, but, at 13:19, maybe a little too much of a good thing, at least for my more Wyattcentric purposes---oh but then "You Really Got Me"---I mean, "We Did It Again"---lopes and crackles right along for 5:48, perfect.

Who is this Otis Wheeler at the start of the thread with his wrong & badly expressed opinions? It's probably a good thing I wasn't on ILX in 2001 as I just know I would have been furious with various posters.

old ILM was wrong about nearly everything, I blame the UK Livejournal crew mostly

Phew! Total panic there for a moment.

I knew that was gonna happen, so sorry!
xxxpost, speaking of crackling, just now I thought a tree was starting to fall across the driveway---windy as hell out there today---but then it sounded like Wyatt doing something with sticks---also right up by my ears (I'm wearing 'phones): just some of the fun with stereo on "Spaced One," from a bunch of manipulated instrumentals used for a multi-media show:
https://cuneiformrecords.bandcamp.com/album/spaced
...recorded in early/mid 1969 by the "classic" Soft Machine trio line-up of Hugh Hopper [bass], Mike Ratledge [electric piano/organ] and Robert Wyatt [drums]..These recordings feature the band at their most radical, and while they would never again use the studio in such an extreme fashion, the work done here definitely influenced later works such as Third and Hugh's 1984.
That opener is by far the longest, and other than little sticks and pokes, mostly organ drone with less bass bobbing. "Spaced Two" starts like a para-proto-Can-Velvets groove: just a little keyboard ripple with kickdrum and closed high-hat maybe, oh it's a loop, and here's another, 'bout to drip from the ceiling, but layers quickly accrue, with maybe realtime variants, or more illusions (Eno says the mind seeks out variety in sameness), then, almost 5 minutes in, several things go backwards, some of them creating an anxious, courteous,persistent pitch, an old butler, drumstick slicing way behind him---nice, one for the Beatles fans.
(Spaced Three: carousel melting backwards in Sgt. Pepper Park, but don't hear Wyatt so fuck it--except points for being shortest track.)
Spaced Six: Awright! Keys, bass, full drum kit wheeling around, greeted by glitch riffs---RW providing solos/bursts as accompaniment to/as negative space and vice versa (accompaniment to/as himself? Might as well). Chopping blocks and going Latin for a second, tapes abused and done. This is the RWrelevant keeper for relatively rational cherrypicking, but I might possibly buy the whole thing (DAMMIT)

some soft machine ephemera using the spaced material: beyond image from the people responsible for their light show at that time

This was mentioned briefly on last year's rolling jazz thread and it's brilliant; best thing I heard in 2019: Hütte & Guests Play the Music of Robert Wyatt https://whyplayjazz.bandcamp.com/album/h-tte-guests-play-the-music-of-robert-wyatt

Thanks! Totally missed that on RJ 2019.
Soft Machine's Backwards starts with the quartet live in May 1970: 18 minutes, 39 seconds, none wasted, jumps right into 7:38 "Moon in June," jumps right into septet "Facelift," from Nov. '69: 8:36, which, with the following (non-freebie-sample)4:05 "Hibou Anemone and Bear," is, along with 20 minutes on the BBC, all the septet recordings, or so the notes here say. All of this is sharp, interlocking, flexible parts, with Wyatt rattling and chopping right through the middle, always responsively. Also 'preciate Hopper's fuzz bass and guitar appeal of Ratledge's keys at times.
Ends with Wyatt's xpost '68 "Moon In June" demo + '69 splice.
https://cuneiformrecords.bandcamp.com/album/backwards

[Noisette is the third in our Soft Machine series, recorded January 4th, 1970 at the same concert as "Facelift" on Third, by the short-lived quintet formation of the group: Elton Dean & Lyn Dobson-reeds, Hugh Hopper-bass, Mike Ratledge-keyboards & Robert Wyatt-drums & vocals. Noisette features the rest of the concert, & showcases a band in transition from their earlier psychedelic/ progressive sound towards the jazz rock sound of Third & Fourth. It features the quintet performing versions of material from their 1st two albums as well as material not available on their studio albums. Mastered directly off of the 30 year old 15ips master tapes, this release boasts superb live sound for the time period.

Well there's some haze, or gauze, but the instruments quickly push through and find enough room for definition. Ratledge's intro is pretty and brief, then he and Wyatt pitch right in, bass is amiably full, reeds squawk and peck at the edges of other sounds, not too much, just keeping 'em on their toes--was thinking reeds were getting thinner than nec., then Hopper belches a bit of fuzz, returning the "look alive!" favor. Later a bit of flute, later still saxes scurry up the Ratledge lattice, suggesting a parody of guitar sounds sometimes--title track is 37 seconds, not one wasted, whole thing seeming like a suite, then finale--finally, one with Robert vocals! It has all these little sections, players bursting through the walls, just as the whole set has these little quick jumps at the end of each song. Sections are what some people haaate about prog, but these are entertaining enough to justify their existence, incl. coexistence.
Only thing: Even though this still sounds sharp, fresh, it's most noteworthy for those qualities, rather than heights and depths of the jazzing--the rocking rocks on, w/o getting corny, smartly melding to the jazz--=and I do miss the voice sometimes on pre-finale workouts, despite the (never-abused) roominess for his drumming, and will once again be glad for him to move on to greener pastures, options-wise. But before that, will continue with these fun Soft Machine sample tracks. This page has 6 out of album's 10:
https://cuneiformrecords.bandcamp.com/album/noisette

Grides presents the most famous version of the band (Elton Dean, Hugh Hopper, Mike Ratledge, Robert Wyatt) recorded live at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam on October 25, 1970, in a high-quality, previously unreleased recording, just a few months after the release of Third and at the peak of their popularity. It showcases them in transition between releases, with the band performing 3 of the four works from Third, as well as some of the earliest recordings of material from the upcomming Fourth, including some very different arrangements to what would eventually end up on that release. Especially in contrast to Noisette, the instruments jump right out, and stay comfortably close to my ears on headphones. finally, I can really hear what Hopper's doing all through the set"some steady twists and turns, like bass balloon sculpture---but he's not trying to be Jaco or Stanley--also, just the right, concentrated doses of fuzz, other distortion--ditto Ratledge, who plays mostly mid- and lower-range, full, warm, but yowly when excited; Wyatt's more spare than previous sets in this series, mainly punctuating, cueing, also stirring and chopping noodles when nec. (not that often). Dean's bundling of acrid shards provides effective contrast with meatitudes of others, but I don't miss him when he's not playing.
Sometimes this seems more relaxed than prev. shows in the series, and "Esther's Nose Job" goes on a little too long, though good ending, and we get a reprise of my favorite tune here, if you can call it that, the slightly spooky "Slightly All The Time," this time with a burst of "Noisette."
Bandcamp page lets us hear about half the tracks; I'll prob buy it and do some cherrypicking, as with most of these sets.
https://cuneiformrecords.bandcamp.com/album/grides

CD edition of Grides incl. DVD of 3.23.71 quartet set at Radio Bremen, which can also be had as a sep. (audio-only) digital album, for 5 bucks. Good idea: it's a 20:17 fistful of well-recorded balloon farm heat and cool networking, like the earlier Grides show, but fitting my attention span better. (Dean even melds with the others, without losing his skronk.) Most exciting passage: Wyatt's voice does something I've never heard before, like layers of duck or geese quavering in strict tempo---rows at a shooting gallery, with a distracting effect---?
Whole thing's here, apparently:
Set-list:
- Neo-Caliban Grides

- Out-Bloody-Rageous

- Robert Wyatt's Vocal Improvisation

- Eamonn Andrews

- All White
https://cuneiformrecords.bandcamp.com/album/live-at-radio-bremen-march-23-1971-from-grides-dvd

(And can even hear Wyatt's kick-drum[?] and toms here, sometimes.)

The previously unreleased show captured on Virtually, recorded March 23, 1971, presents the classic quartet Softs during their final European tour & just 4 months before their dissolution...versions of all the tracks from Fourth, most of Third and much more...special note must be made of Robert's drumming, as he plays with more gusto on this show than most from this period. Right at the beginning, as they jump into "Teeth," his interplay with the keys is right up front: dual lead lines, even though (except for the bass, which is always played and recorded splendidly here), the overall sound quality of this track isn't quite up to the rest---though it sure is on the next one, the title song, and most of the rest.
But the sound is also too good to listen around Dean as much as I'd like; he and the prev. reliable Ratledge and too many tracks get tiresome, despite the rhythm section's best efforts, and abrupt cut-offs (obvious edits, not realtime-sounding jumps, like on some previous sets in this series).
Of these six sample tracks, out of ten on the album, think I'll prob just get "Virtually"---should listen to the whole thing somewhere else maybe, but suspect I'm getting tired of this whole approach/that it was time for RW to move on. I'm ready for Cuneiform's live Matching Mole sets.
https://cuneiformrecords.bandcamp.com/album/virtually

there's an FB group for him and a few neighbors and friends of his post there regularly. someone walked by his house yesterday and waved to him, he was on the porch.

He’s still doing stuff albeit officially retired. He curated an hour of music for a new online Palestinian radio station a few days ago.

He and Alfie also have a book coming out in September - lyrics and drawings I think

Actually a Hopper song, but this thread is more active so I'll put it here. Weyes Blood did a nice cover of "A Certain Kind" a few years ago.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9YQKhIateQ&list=RDIr3_z9KCmnw&index=50

Oh Well, it's searchable.

Posting vids works better for me via Firefox, not the private window, just the basiic. Anyway, found it from your link, sounds good, thanks! Soft Machine Vol One version on same page. Thanks also to akim and Jeff W for updates, sure wish I could walk by his house and wave, oh well will check the book. I need to check more Hopper; I mainly know him from Wilde Flowers, Soft Machine, and the Material cover of "Memories." Where should I start with his other bands? Also, is there a book that covers the Canterbury crew from early to fairly recent years?

When I was compiling early Canterbury stuff, this was the main source for the really early years, like pre-65.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canterburied_Sounds,_Vol._1%E2%80%934

It's an odd grab-bag of stuff, some of it not very good at all, still worth a listen though.

The Hopper and Elton Dean albums are good. I also like the one he did with Caveman Shoestore, calling themselves Caveman Hughscore.

man I tried again with that one recently after owning it for many years, and altho there are some real high points I just cannot hang with the main Caveman guy's stream-of-consciousness lyrics

Yeah, it's an acquired taste. I appreciate the music over the lyrics. As a progger from way back I've learned to tune out silly lyrics.

Smoke Signals compiles all previously unreleased performances - selected & sequenced by Robert Wyatt biographer Mike King - from the band's most intense gigging period. The set list is mostly drawn from Little Red Record, but the way the band performed the pieces live is quite different from the heavily overdubbed versions found on the studio disc.
Yeah, Matching Mole is Jack B. Nimble here--gotta be, or Wyatt might roll right over the others. No busywork in the v. compatible bandcamp sample tracks though: put of 10, we get "Smoke Rings" (double bass with a pickup, and sometimes a bow??), "Brandy as in Benjii" (after Benjii the dog movie star?), "March Ides II," (my fave), and "Smoke Signal," which has good thick fuzzy drones--guitar, bass, both?---and liquid electric piano floating in a glass---thee good jazz rock, or jazzy rock, before fusion got so complicated. Refreshing! Guess I did binge on Soft Machine. No vocals in this foursome, alas.
https://cuneiformrecords.bandcamp.com/album/smoke-signals

Wii have to try Canterburied Sounds, thanks!

personally for me his peak period is the stuff he put out in the late '70s - "hopper tunity box", "monster band", and "two rainbows daily" with alan gowen. "two rainbows daily" in particular is just spectacular, a really underheard gem.

for later stuff i very much enjoy the "soft mountain" release, a record with hopper and elton dean that's very much in the spirit of the fourth soft machine record, with hoppy kamiyama and tatsuya yoshida on keys and drums.

i wasn't at all a fan of "1984", which i remember as just being these strange tape loops without much in the way of melody. i might like it more today if i gave it another listen.

I cannot imagine Tatsuya Yoshida playing anything like Soft Machine 4

sorry, fifth - there's definitely more phil howard than robert wyatt in his playing!

I know it’s seen as this super minor entry in his catalogue but the little piano, voice and drum sketches of A Short Break are going down really well right now.

still get a scare when this thread is bumped

DO NOT POST IN THIS THREAD

Early ILM, getting it all wrong to be contrarian, yet again...

from the Soft Machine's SPACED thread: no lime compensates us for above video removed:

bummer about the disappeared video, seems to have vanished completely. anyway, it's available as an extra on this* which is where i first came across it.

― no lime tangier, Saturday, August 22, 2020 10:29 PM
*https://shop.bfi.org.uk/separation-dual-format-edition.html

This is from a late '07 profile that I wrote for a collegetown alt-weekly, prob emergency filler when some Star suddenly cancelled an interview and/or show, so the editor wasn't too picky---first part was the usual sort of bio, but I still like this about the musical journey:

...Rock Bottom, Wyatt’s 1974 debut solo album, doesn’t directly address his accident, but its dazzling ballad, “Sea Song,” confidently greets “...a seasonal beast, like the starfish that drifts in with the tide. So until your blood runs to meet the next full moon, your madness fits in nicely with my own...we’re not alone.” Yet in “Last Straw,” he’s “buried deep in the sand.” By 1975’s Ruth Is Stranger Than Richard, he’s a little piece of pork, singing a “Soup Song”: “Now there’s no hope I’m getting out of here, I can feel I’m going soft!” But at least he can wish the soup-eater a tummy ache. On “Team Spirit,” he’s a happier pigskin, taunting the football player who’s kicking him, but also urges, “Use me to go to hell for leather and back,” because they give each other meaning.

Wyatt had recently married lyricist-graphic artist Alfreda Benge, and as he later acknowledged, “Life began to make sense.” She supported and challenged him. In the early 80s, he recorded Elis Costello and Clive Langer’s “Shipbuilding,” about a worker whose ancient trade and town’s prosperity are finally revived by the UK government’s (shady) Falklands War, to which the shipbuilder’s son is shipped off. (“But I’ll be home by Christmas.”) Wyatt also covered Peter Gabriel’s “Biko,” an elegiac, then galvanizing account of and response to South African activist Steve Biko’s death, while being held by the Apartheid regime‘s police---and Nile Rodgers’ “At Last I Am Free,” a ballad that accounts, note by note, for every step toward and through strength and freedom.

“Biko” is in the Wyatt collection Mid-Eighties, which also contains his 1985 Old Rottenhat, where connections between the personal and political could get ranty, and there are some cranky moments in the middle of the new album, Comicopera. But it begins with a couple’s questions and answers for each other, settling and shifting.They make love, while beautiful music lures other characters into making war.The beauty tries to grow out of that, as Wyatt, at the height of his powers as a multi-instrumentalist and arranger, leads jazz and rock players, singers, and listeners through Spanish and Italian words and melodies, like sunshine spilled through bullet holes.