Bundles was recorded by Soft Machine in July 1974 at CBS Whitfield Street Studios in London and released by Harvest in March 1975. It is the band's eighth studio album and the first to give guitar a central role: Allan Holdsworth joined alongside Karl Jenkins on oboe, soprano saxophone and piano, Mike Ratledge on keyboards and synthesizer, Roy Babbington on bass and John Marshall on drums. Ray Warleigh adds flutes to The Floating World.
Most of the music is by Jenkins, built on repeated keyboard patterns over which Holdsworth's fluid, fast lines unwind, most famously across the five parts of Hazard Profile. Holdsworth wrote Gone Sailing and Land Of The Bag Snakes. By then the group had moved far from its Canterbury psychedelic roots toward a tight jazz-rock close to the fusion of the time. It was Ratledge's last full studio album with the band he had co-founded.
The second disc is a concert recorded for radio at Nottingham University on 11 October 1975, previously issued on its own, with material from Bundles and pieces later found on Softs.
Japanese 2CD reissue by Belle Antique in two mini LP replica sleeves with wraparound obi, Japanese booklet and a second obi replicating the 1975 Japanese edition, SHM-CD, remastered.
