Soft Machine - Slightly All the Time

Although each side has one long track, side two has several sub-sections with titles. On the back cover and label, it is listed as just "Slightly All the Time", but the track list printed on the inner gatefold states:

"Slightly All the Time" (Ratledge) / "Noisette" (Hopper) 0:40 / "Slightly All the Time" (Ratledge)

"Noisette" is the only track on the original UK edition to show a timing, and it is only approximate to help identify the section, which is not banded separately, and appears about 3/4 of the way into the piece, with a reprise at the end. On some CD editions, the track listing is further broken down, as:

"Slightly All the Time" (Ratledge) / "Noisette" (Hopper) / "Backwards" (Ratledge) / "Slightly All the Time (reprise)" (Ratledge)

"Backwards" is the section that takes up most of the last five minutes of the track. With this modification, "Slightly All the Time (reprise)" is not really correct, as the ending is actually a reprise of "Noisette". The two middle sections of this revised track list originally appeared in the middle of a suite called "Mousetrap", composed by Hugh Hopper, and appeared in a BBC broadcast in 1969 prior to the recording of Third (later issued on the group's Triple Echo compilation album in 1977, and subsequently re-issued on other compilations) with this breakdown:

"Mousetrap" (Hopper) / "Noisette" (Hopper) / "Backwards" (Ratledge) / "Mousetrap (reprise)" (Hopper)

On Third, the riff from "Mousetrap" can be heard near the end of "Backwards", and gives the impression the group are about to launch into this piece to close (and it's possible they did so in the original studio session), but an abrupt edit brings the music to a reprise of "Noisette" instead.

Before the "Noisette" and "Backwards" sections were added to "Slightly All the Time", Soft Machine performed a shorter version of "Slightly" as part of a suite which also included an abbreviated "Out-Bloody-Rageous". A BBC studio performance of this suite can be found on Triple Echo and other compilations.

Years later, "Backwards" appeared as a track on its own when it was covered by fellow Canterbury band Caravan on their 1973 album For Girls Who Grow Plump In The Night, as part of the "A-Hunting We Shall Go" medley.

"Slightly All the Time" was used as the background for the syndicated "Realities" news program distributed by many 1970s-era "underground" radio stations.

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