Description

Fourth is a 1971 studio album by the Canterbury band Soft Machine. The album is also titled Four or 4 in the USA; the numeral “4” is the title as shown on the cover in all countries, but a written-out title appears on the spine and label.

This was the group’s first all-instrumental album, although their previous album Third had almost completed the band’s move in this direction toward instrumental jazz, and a complete abandonment of their original self-presentation as a psychedelic pop group, or progressive rock group.

It was also the last of their albums to include drummer and founding member Robert Wyatt who afterwards left to record a solo album, The End of an Ear, and then founded a new group, Matching Mole, whose name was a pun on “Soft Machine” as pronounced in French: “Machine Molle”.

Original Label. LP Columbia C 30754 1971 *****