Soft Machine laboured under the augmented Soft Machine Legacy title in the early part of this century, something they quite rightly put a stop to with 2018’s Hidden Details – the group’s first studio album since 1981’s Land Of Cockayne. Five years later, Other Doors does a fine job of balancing the past with the present, and also what’s to come.
Soft Machine are, after all, less a band and more an organism which is constantly evolving. The line-up never stayed settled for long, with the Softs averaging one major regeneration per album, and so it goes with this recent incarnation. Bassist Roy Babbington went into retirement with Hidden Details in the can, and now with the release of Other Doors, we say goodbye to drum legend John Marshall, who is hanging up his sticks due to ongoing health problems. Babbington and Marshall will be missed, though with almost 30 line-up changes over the years, one suspects the group will somehow continue. Plus ça change.
