Hugh Hopper - Hoppertunity Box

Cuneiform Rune 240

For being a band heralded for their burning live performances, especially in the early 1970s, the Soft Machine were major proponents of studio trickery. What was a tight live sound was infinitely altered and overdubbed over the course of four “proper” studio albums, an ethic that pervaded even later (post-Hugh Hopper) editions of the ensemble. Elton Dean overdubbing keyboard parts alongside his alto; Hopper multi-tracking his basses; even tracks spliced and combined from live and studio performances – yet this did nothing to diminish the output of an excellent fusion group. It’s little wonder that, as the chief tunesmith of the ‘classic’ foursome, Hugh Hopper employed a composer’s arsenal of overdubbed instrumentation on his Orwellian homage, 1984, including percussion, bass, piano and soprano saxophone. Following his exit from the Softs, Hopper recorded a second and more fully-realized set of studio tracks for the Norwegian Compendium label, issued as Hoppertunity Box in 1976, now re-edited for a proper CD edition.

It’s not entirely correct to say that Hopper was “Prince Alone in the Studio” for either 1984 or Hoppertunity Box; tenor saxophonist Gary Windo is present on both recordings, and the ensemble here also includes jazzmen Dean and trumpeter Marc Charig. Further on hand are drummers Mike Travis and Nigel Morris; electric organist Dave Stewart (Hatfield and the North; National Health), guitarist Richard Brunton and pianist Frank Roberts. Hopper laid down the bass parts on every track, overdubbing each musician’s part subsequently – whether plaintive electric-piano noodling or a patented Windo tenor freak out. Though Hopper could certainly run a band in real-time, his composer’s ear goes well beyond what a real-time band might be capable of, rather piecing together his music from a collective – but distinct – sonic template.

Despite the studio-assemblage aspect of this recording, it does feel present and less sterile than one might expect – after all, Dean, Windo and Travis were in Hopper’s working band at the time, and their familiarity with his musical world (not to mention their own hotly-burning fires) lends immediacy to the proceedings. “Miniluv,” a vehicle for Windo’s tenor pyrotechnics on 1984, is given a treatment of dense synthesizer and bass foregrounding, an overarching of gadgetry atop the brusque and decidedly human saxophone exhortations. Hopper and Travis, whether or not they are truly “together,” nevertheless combine to make a fine rhythm team. This togetherness extends even to ridiculously uptempo prog-fusion moves like the Hatfield-esque first half of “Gnat Prong” (its second part a queasy duo of organ and fuzz-bass).

The Canterbury crowd isn’t without a love for all things Ornette Coleman, whose music was an early inspiration to the likes of Hopper, Robert Wyatt, Daevid Allen and Kevin Ayers. Hopper covers “Lonely Woman” here as Ayers did “Joy of a Toy” before and Wyatt would go so far as Charlie Haden’s “Song for Ché” on Ruth is Stranger than Richard. Windo, Dean and Charig enter in dusky unison after a brief acoustic guitar theme statement, delayed bass pulsing and shading the corners, slowly overtaking the hornmen and their burnished voices. Studio reverb and a fragmentation of the theme drown the subject’s longing in psychedelic goo, the loneliest woman being Charig’s plaintive closing whisper.

Hopper was certainly a wellspring of ideas in the fertile post-Softs era, and even if some of his combinations sound slightly dated, there is prescience in the melding of ephemeral collectivity (or the idea of it) and composerly architecture, piece by piece. That said I have the greatest fondness for the closing “Oyster Perpetual,” a self-duet on electric bass and acoustic guitar, which nakedly displays what a masterful technician and soulful player Hopper is on his main axe. Obviously, his visions are grander than the instrument, but the instrument has the last word.

~ Clifford Allen