Album of the Day

Volume Two, by Soft Machine (1969): Very rarely do two albums released back-to-back by the same band end up sounding so very different. This second set from Canterbury forefathers packs 17 tracks (17!) into its 33-minute running time. The material is a jazzier free-form approach to the psychedelia of the day, complete with the requisite Canterbury sense of humor (a run through the alphabet not once but twice on the same album? OK, so one is backwards, but still . . .). Third, by contrast is a sprawling double album consisting of just four tracks (one per side, you pre-LP kids) and moves the band more towards jazz fusion. A lot of prog fans prefer Third, but I prefer the quirky nuggets of this disc.