I remember the first time I listened to Rock Bottom. I think it was in 1998, I was about twenty, and at this time I don’t think I knew a lot of things about Robert Wyatt and Soft Machine. Maybe had I just already read a few things about this record, just enough to stimulate my curiosity : I remember a french rock magazine publicating the ritual „top 10 albums all all time“ of his redactors, and one of them put this record… Not on the first position, or not only : in the second, in the third, etc…

The kind of stuff which can make you think a record is worth listening…

I also remembered I fastly developed a strange phenomenon of accoutumance with it ; I began to come back to it without really being aware of it, and to listen exclusively to this strange record. How could we explain that kind of things ? I think it began on the first listening of „Sea Song“ : This song has a kind of hypnotic effect, the melancholic and tortuous chord suite, the very special, very slow and aquatic mood of the song… and most of all, Robert Wyatt’s voice. A very high voice, so strange to hear for the first time…

There’s a song in Rock Bottom called „Little Red Riding Hood Hit The Road“, with a part of it which seemed to me, at those days, totally recorded in reversed mode : voice, drums, organ layers maybe, horns maybe… I thought it was simply the same tape put in reverse mode at 3’42, as Robert Wyatt sings „stop it… stop it… ti pots… ti pots“, (tea pots ?), we clearly understand it’s the same words in reverse mode, at the same time the drums reverse too. But today, as I hear this song again, I think it’s more complicated than this… And I don’t want to analyze it to discover precisely what REALLY happens in this song… What I hear is a really blurred sonor universe where reversed sounds and normal sounds naturally mix with each other, to create a kind of very particular dreamy mood. But we can say that the whole album is in that kind of mood, even if in a song like „alifie“ it’s darker, more oppressing and nearly nightmare-like.

I knew something about this album when I was twenty : When he recorded it, in 1974, Robert Wyatt – who was a brilliant jazz-influenced drummer in Soft Machine, and in Matching Mole, the band he had just left – had just had a tragic accident which made him lose the use of his legs. That’s a reason why the songs of this album are not based on a real rock drum basis – which is uncommon for a record assimilated to progressive rock : in fact, the handicap probably forced him to think about his music in a different, more aerated way ; the sobriety of the rhythmical basis leaves more space to the songs, arrangements and melodies. This tragedy he lived, naturally, also influenced the mood of the album, a very particular mood indeed : There’s a kind of deep sadness in this record, but a very special, very hypnotic one, crossed with rays of light…

Sébastien Adam ist Frontmann der französischen Band The Bewitched Hands, die zuletzt ihr Album „Birds & Drums“ (Zomba) veröffentlichte.