The record
At a glance
- Artist
- Soft Machine
- Released
- February 1973
- Format
- Live LP plus studio LP
- Line-up
- Jenkins, Ratledge, Hopper and Marshall
- Indexed pieces
- Fifteen
- Producer
- Soft Machine
Why it matters
A new quartet proves itself twice
Six is the first Soft Machine album built around Karl Jenkins and John Marshall together. Both came from Nucleus, but they do not simply import another band's sound. Jenkins adds oboe, saxophones and electric piano to Mike Ratledge's keyboard field; Marshall gives Hugh Hopper a rhythm partner whose attack is firm enough to support riffs yet flexible enough for open transitions.
The double-album design refuses to treat performance and composition as interchangeable. The first record draws from concerts in Guildford and Brighton, edited into eleven connected selections. The second contains four studio works recorded in London. One half shows how the quartet organises time before an audience; the other exposes what it constructs when repetition, overdub and sound itself can be reconsidered.
That comparison makes Six more than a transitional release. The live record demonstrates immediate collective fluency only months after Jenkins joined. The studio record preserves competing futures: Jenkins's layered loops, Ratledge's lyrical writing and Hopper's solitary electronic abstraction all belong to the same band but do not point in exactly the same direction.
1972
Nucleus experience enters after Dean
Robert Wyatt had left in 1971, Phil Howard appeared on the first side of Fifth and Marshall completed that album. Elton Dean then departed in 1972. Jenkins replaced him on reeds and keyboards, creating a quartet with two members of the established Soft Machine core and two musicians shaped by Nucleus.
The live material was recorded on 20 October at Guildford Civic Hall and 1 November at the Dome in Brighton. The studio record followed between 18 November and 5 December, principally at CBS Studios with one track made at Advision. Roger Beale and Gary Martin handled the respective studio engineering.
Six arrived in February 1973. It became Hopper's last complete studio album as a Soft Machine member; he left after its release, and Roy Babbington assumed the bass role for Seven.
The Six quartet
Dual keyboards and reeds over a rebuilt rhythm section
Jenkins changes both melody and harmony. His oboe can make a riff unusually pointed, his saxophones extend the wind language after Dean, and his electric piano creates a second keyboard surface beside Ratledge. The resulting density is organised by register rather than by a simple soloist-accompaniment hierarchy.
Ratledge remains the strongest link to the previous catalogue. All White returns from Fifth, while Gesolreut and the two longer studio pieces preserve his interest in asymmetrical themes and fuzz-organ intensity. Jenkins does not replace him; the two temporarily create a productive overlap.
Hopper and Marshall are exceptionally complementary. Hopper's fuzz bass supplies repeating architecture, while Marshall makes it exact without making it rigid. On the studio side, however, Hopper's 1983 steps away from the quartet and turns tape and electronic effect into a private landscape.
Sound and construction
Continuous concert logic versus studio construction
The live album behaves as one suite assembled from named modules. Short Jenkins fanfares and links lead into longer Ratledge pieces; endings become entrances, and audience context matters less than uninterrupted motion.
Marshall's drums make the linked form legible. He can mark a new section without stopping, tighten under an oboe figure or let a solo float over a stable pulse. Hopper's bass often announces the next architecture before the upper voices arrive.
The studio LP begins differently. The Soft Weed Factor builds an extended design through repetition and layering, using studio control to create patterns no single concert pass needs to reproduce exactly.
Stanley Stamps Gibbon Album and Chloe and the Pirates restore Ratledge's melodic breadth. Jenkins's reeds move through the keyboard harmony with a clearer lead role than on the live half, especially when oboe turns long lines into something vocal without words.
1983 closes by reducing the band to Hopper's bass and effects. Its abstraction is not a summary of the quartet; it is a fissure inside it. The album ends with one member imagining space outside the ensemble that has dominated the preceding three sides.
Track guide
Eleven live cells and four studio compositions
Fanfare
Jenkins opens the live record with a compact ceremonial signal. The piece establishes reed colour and collective precision before the first substantial theme.
Its brevity is functional: Six begins by showing that a link can have compositional identity.
All White
Ratledge's Fifth theme returns in a more compressed, performance-shaped form. Jenkins's presence changes the upper register while Marshall now owns the rhythmic frame from the first beat.
The older piece functions as a bridge between lineups rather than a museum reproduction.
Between
The title states its purpose: Jenkins and Ratledge create material that lives between larger destinations. Oboe, keyboard and rhythm section keep the transition active.
It demonstrates that the live set is composed across boundaries, not merely edited after applause.
Riff
Jenkins reduces identity to a repeating figure whose force comes from ensemble agreement. Each instrument reinforces or colours the cell without exhausting it.
Hopper and Marshall make repetition physical, allowing reeds and keyboards to alter emphasis above them.
37½
Ratledge turns a numerical title into angular motion. Written lines and fuzzed keyboard attack give the piece a sharper outline than the surrounding Jenkins links.
The performance expands the figure through solo space without losing its peculiar metric character.
Gesolreut
The title encodes musical syllables, fitting a composition concerned with ordered pitch and sequence. Ratledge's theme creates a platform for the quartet's interlocking voices.
Jenkins and Ratledge share the melodic field while the rhythm section keeps the complex surface moving forward.
E.P.V.
Jenkins supplies another short connective composition, lighter in mass than the pieces around it. Its role is to redirect energy rather than deliver a separate climax.
The live album depends on such changes of scale to prevent continuous playing from becoming uniform.
Lefty
Credited collectively, Lefty makes ensemble decision the composition. Riff, texture and improvisation arise from the four players' shared timing.
Its group identity contrasts with the clearly authored modules and reveals how quickly the new lineup could operate without a single leader.
Stumble
Jenkins makes imbalance compact and rhythmic. The title suggests a misstep, but the quartet turns displacement into deliberate momentum.
It acts as a springboard into Marshall's feature rather than a miniature isolated for its own sake.
5 From 13 (For Phil Seamen with Love & Thanks)
Marshall's composition and dedication place drumming history at the centre of the set. Numeric framing becomes a vehicle for pulse, subdivision and personal tribute.
The piece confirms that the new drummer contributes material, not only a replacement beat.
Riff II
The first record closes by returning to Jenkins's riff principle in shortened form. Recognition gives the connected performance a structural ending.
Rather than grand resolution, the quartet leaves through the same economy that helped it enter.
The Soft Weed Factor
Jenkins begins the studio album with its most extended experiment in repetition. Layers accumulate until small shifts in tone and register become the main drama.
The controlled construction contrasts with the live record's shared real-time decisions, establishing the studio half as a separate proposition.
Stanley Stamps Gibbon Album (for B.O.)
Ratledge joins a memorable title to a compact composition whose melodic line keeps changing perspective. Electric keyboards can be dry, forceful or suddenly spacious.
The band sounds composed without losing elasticity, providing the studio side's clearest balance between structure and solo voice.
Chloe and the Pirates
Ratledge's longest studio contribution unfolds with unusual lyrical breadth. Jenkins's oboe supplies a singing line that gives the piece character without fixing a literal adventure.
Keyboard harmony, reed melody and the Hopper-Marshall foundation create the album's most generous ensemble statement.
1983
Hopper closes alone with bass and electronic effects, replacing ensemble conversation with loops, texture and distance. The future year becomes an imagined environment rather than a narrative forecast.
Its isolation is decisive. After three sides proving the quartet, Six ends by revealing that one of its founders is already listening beyond it.
A documentary diptych
Two methods, not one narrative
Six is not a narrative concept album. Its coherent idea is comparison: live against studio, collective flow against assembled texture, short functional links against extended autonomous compositions.
Numbers and coded titles recur, but they do not form a puzzle with one solution. They reflect a music that treats measurement, repetition and proportion as expressive material.
The final contrast is social. The live record documents a new quartet learning to think as one; 1983 removes that social body. Both belong because the album permits multiple definitions of Soft Machine at once.
The double album
The number six divides into two records
The restrained cover continues the numbered identity of Fourth and Fifth. The title announces catalogue position while the double format supplies the real conceptual information.
Original sequencing makes the live/studio division physical: the listener changes records before entering the controlled studio programme. A single-CD edition should preserve that boundary in its presentation.
Fifteen index points can make the live half look fragmented on a screen. The package's deeper instruction is the opposite: eleven names describe one continuous concert construction.
February 1973
A double album introduces a durable phase
Six was released in February 1973 on CBS as a double album. Eleven live selections occupy the first record and four studio compositions the second.
The format introduced the Jenkins-Marshall lineup through evidence rather than explanation. Listeners could hear its stage fluency and its studio ambitions within the same package.
The album's scale did not depend on vocals, orchestral guests or one side-long title. Its ambition lies in contrasting working methods and allowing the quartet's identity to emerge through both.
Before Seven
Hopper's final full studio chapter
Six established Marshall as a lasting rhythmic centre and Jenkins as an increasingly important composer and instrumentalist. Their influence would grow after Hopper's departure.
For Hopper, the album is a complex farewell: his bass drives the live quartet, supports the studio pieces and finally leaves the group behind in 1983. He departed before Seven.
The record remains one of the clearest documents of Soft Machine as a process rather than a fixed lineup. A band can change members, repertoire and production method while retaining a recognisable way of organising sound.
Which edition?
Keep the live and studio halves identifiable
Do not shuffle the live eleven. Fanfare, Between, E.P.V., Stumble and Riff II are connective architecture as much as separate tracks.
Pause before The Soft Weed Factor. The studio album begins a new listening experiment, even when a digital edition places it seconds after the concert.
Compare 1983 with Hopper's bass throughout the live LP. The same musician who creates collective stability ends by dismantling ensemble space.
A listening path
Compare the same quartet under two kinds of pressure
- First pass: Hear the live record continuously, pause, then play the four studio pieces.
- Second pass: Follow Jenkins and Ratledge as two keyboard-and-melody systems.
- Third pass: Compare Hopper's live foundations with the solitary effects of 1983.
- Then continue: Move to Seven to hear Babbington replace Hopper and Jenkins assume greater compositional control.
Research trail
Sources and further reading
- Soft Machine official history — Soft Machine
- Soft Machine studio discography — Calyx: The Canterbury Discography
- Six catalogue analysis — Calyx
- Six original release and track record — MusicBrainz
- Six release-group history — MusicBrainz