I Matching Mole: an "Instant team", a creature by Robert Wyatt

Matching Mole are a band formed in 1971 by Robert Wyatt, who was also leader and main songwriter, after leaving Soft Machine, and he also gave them a name derived from the French translation of Soft Machine, Machine Molle, as a tribute to the previous group.

Theirs is Progressive Rock, with jazz influences and a strong avant-garde component, and it isn’t far from that of Soft Machine, but with a sound, melodies and vocalisms that would mark Wyatt’s solo work. In fact, Wyatt had left Soft Machine precisely because he wanted to give more space to the vocal part, in contrast with the band.

Only two studio albums, both from 1972: Matching Mole and Little Red Record.

The initial line-up, that of the first self-titled album, consisted of Wyatt, Dave Sinclair (ex Caravan) on keyboards, Phil Miller on guitar and Bill MacCormick on bass.

On the next album, the last of the 70s, Little Red Record, Dave Sinclair would be replaced by David MacRae.

The band is made up of absolute stars in the world of jazz and prog, in some way all connected to each other.

- Robert Wyatt, who created the Canterbury Scene in Wilde Flowers (David Allen Trio, Wilde Flowers, Soft Machine, Matching Mole), which also included David Sinclair (Wilde Flowers, Caravan, Matching Mole, Caravan of Love). Phil Miller (Delivery, Matching Mole, Hatfield and the North, National Health) and Bill MacCormick (Quiet Sun, Matching Mole) were Wyatt’s friends since the Wilde Flowers days.

- Dave MacRae, who played with Clark Terry, Chet Baker, Jon Hendricks, Gil Evans and Nucleus, had met Wyatt during an audition (Wyatt’s with Nucleus).

On the second album, Brian Eno on synthesizer and Robert Fripp would also collaborate.

Due to poor commercial success, Matching Mole broke up and Wyatt devoted himself to composing. He then decided to re-form the band with a new line-up, McCormick on bass, Gary Windo on saxophone and Francis Monkman on keyboards, but the unthinkable happened: during the recording of the new album, on 1 June 1973, during Gilli Smyth’s birthday party, Wyatt fell from a third-floor window of a building, remaining paralyzed from the waist down. He survived but found himself confined to a wheelchair; the accident made him paraplegic and forced him to spend several months in hospital. Unable to play a normal drum kit, he focused on singing and played keyboards, percussion, slide guitar and a small drum kit without hi-hat and bass drum. Because of the tragic event, he therefore abandoned the Matching Mole project.

The tracks that were meant to be part of the album were used on Rock Bottom (1974), his first album after the June 1973 accident.

I’ll close with a quote from Wyatt about the accident: «The doctor was astonished. He told me: 'You must have been really drunk to stay so relaxed while falling from the third floor'. If I’d been just a little more sober, I probably wouldn’t be here today: I would have tensed my whole body out of fear and I would have smashed myself up.» (Robert Wyatt)

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