Robert himself isn't keen on the ‘drummer biped’ decade leading up to the 1973 accident that left him paraplegic, and certainly his subsequent solo career contains his finest work. But his releases as a singing drummer and band member, first with Soft Machine and then with Matching Mole, weren't too shabby either. These tapes come, as you might guess, from 1968, when Robert was in America. It seemed at the time, wrongly as it turned out, that Soft Machine were finished; these long-forgotten recordings, painstakingly restored from recently discovered acetates, find him working towards the sound of his subsequent solo career. As well as singing and playing drums, he also plays keyboard instruments and even bass (although some bloke called Jimi Hendrix picks up the instrument for ‘Slow Walkin' Talk’). It's great to hear the two staples, ‘Rivmic Melodies’ and ‘Moon In June’, but the big surprise is ‘Chelsea’ – later known to Matching Mole fans as ‘Signed Curtain’. There have been a lot of Soft Machine and Matching Mole recordings unearthed in recent years, but – although there are only four songs here – it's '68 that takes the biscuit.