Soft Machine: Roy Babbington (electric bass); John Marshall , Allan Holdsworth, Mike Ratledge, Karl Jenkins.
Personnel: Allan Holdsworth (electric guitar, violin); Karl Jenkins (recorder, oboe, soprano saxophone, piano, electric piano); Mike Ratledge (electric piano, organ, synthesizer); Roy Babbington (bass guitar); John Marshall (drums, percussion).
Liner Note Author: Aymeric Leroy.
Recording information: Post-Aula, Bremen-Horn, Germany (01/29/1975).
Director: Peter Schulze.
Photographers: Fabrizio Cecca; Fernando M. Natalici.
Recorded for German radio in early 1975, FLOATING WORLD LIVE includes many of the compositions featured on the BUNDLES album released later that same year. By the mid-'70s, Soft Machine was a completely different band from the Dada-ist troupe that had emerged from Canterbury in the late 1960s. These pieces, mostly written by horn and keyboard player Karl Jenkins and guitarist Alan Holdsworth, are mid-'70s jazz-rock at its finest. More organic-sounding than its contemporaries the Mahavishnu Orchestra, the band swings from the Zen-like pastoral feel of the title track and the exploratory "Penny Hitch" to the incendiary rock attack of "Hazard Profile (Part One)," while "Land of the Bag Snake" features Holdsworth soloing as if his life depended on it.