Consumer Guide Album

Soft Machine: "Fourth" [Columbia, 1971]
Having dropped the trance-music distensions for theme-and-variation arrangements (long on the arrangement and short on the variation though they may be), does the band still call this "rock"? It's English jazz, that's all--neither as flawed as you'd fear nor as muscular as its American counterparts. Non-composing saxophonist Elton Dean is the dominant voice, as saxophonists tend to be. He's adequate or better at free blowing, no mean accomplishment, but he's also a little thin in the embouchure, as English saxophonists tend to be. B