Between 1970 and 1973 Soft Machine recorded five albums for CBS, and across those five records the band changed almost beyond recognition. Third still had Robert Wyatt singing on one side of it; by Seven there were no vocals, no Wyatt, no Elton Dean and no Hugh Hopper, and the group was playing a dense, written, riff-driven music that had more to do with Miles Davis's electric bands than with anything else coming out of England. This box follows that arc in detail. All five albums are here, remastered from the original quarter inch tapes, alongside twelve further discs of sessions, concerts and film.

The find is an entirely different set of recordings of Fifth, previously unreleased, taped by the same line-up and shelved. It sits on the same disc as the released album. The BBC material is the other substantial addition: all of the band's surviving sessions and In Concert broadcasts from 1970 to 1974, roughly half of it never issued, and the previously released portions restored to complete performances for the first time.

Three CDs are given to concerts. The Proms appearance at the Royal Albert Hall on 13 August 1970, recorded by BBC Radio 3, catches the Wyatt / Mike Ratledge / Dean / Hopper quartet at full stretch on Out-Bloody-Rageous and Esther's Nose Job. Bremen, March 1971, is a long set licensed from Radio Bremen. Montreux, July 1974, has Allan Holdsworth in the band with Karl Jenkins, John Marshall and Roy Babbington, playing Bundles material a year before it was released.

The three Blu-rays run to over six hours of television, most of it unseen since broadcast and drawn from the French, Belgian and German archives: Théâtre de la Musique in Paris (March 1970, INA), Théâtre 140 in Brussels (January 1971, SONUMA), Beat Club at Radio Bremen (March 1971), the Berliner Jazztage at the Philharmonie (November 1971), the Rockenstock session filmed at CBS Studios London (November 1972), BBC's Full House (February 1973), the Jazz Workshop in Hamburg (May 1973), the Bataclan (May 1973) and Montreux again.

Compiled by Mark Powell. Housed in a 12 x 12 inch slipcase with a hardback book of rare photographs and notes by Sid Smith. Fourteen CDs plus three Blu-rays, seventeen discs in total.