Matching Mole

Matching Mole was Robert Wyatt's post-Soft Machine group, its name a play on the French translation of Soft Machine, "machine molle." Wyatt first managed to draw keyboardist and fellow Cantabrian Dave Sinclair from Caravan, then continued to recruit a first-rate band: bassist Bill MacCormick was previously in Quiet Sun and guitarist Phil Miller came from Delivery, while Nucleus' pianist David MacRae rounded out the lineup as a second keyboardist. The debut album begins with Sinclair and Wyatt's idiosyncratic and affected "O Caroline," one of only two songs with vocals on the record. The track slides straight into the sublime "Instant Pussy," where Wyatt's voice is used in a wordless role. From there, the album is instrumental, flush with fusion-like textures that rely heavy on improvisation. There is a hint of the so-called Canterbury sound, but the playing is distinctively looser and decidedly jazzier. Of course, the performances are all first-rate, particularly on Miller's "Part of The Dance," the only composition not written by (or with) Wyatt. The album closes with the King Crimson-esque Mellotron-fest "Immediate Curtain." Unsurprisingly then, it was Robert Fripp who was called in to produce the band's second album, Little Red Record, released in October of the same year. Absent on that record were both Wyatt's writing from the composition credits and Sinclair's fuzzed-out Hammond, as the latter musician had left for Hatfield and the North. Overall, the sound on this album is heavier; the uncharacteristic "Gloria Gloom," sounding analogous to its title, features guest Brian Eno. The debut album's charming cover of a mole was replaced with an equally charming play on a Chinese communist postcard—a not-so-subtle hint at Wyatt's political future. In June 1973, Wyatt's paralysis from a fall from a fourth-floor window led to the group's end. He spent the next six months in hospital in Aylesbury recuperating.