The title riffs around the titles of two tracks, ‘The French Lesson’ and ‘The German Lesson’, from the Softs’ then-current album, 7. Except, perversely, those songs don't turn up on this live-from-Rotterdam recording. In fact, virtually nothing is carried through from that release. 7 was the first album with Roy Babbington replacing Hugh Hopper, and indeed with Karl Jenkins only just starting to embed himself as a writer, the band not surprisingly has a ‘Nucleus’-y feel to it. There's a rockier edge, notably on ‘Gesolreut’ and unashamedly on ‘Hazard Profile’, with Jenkins transfusing Nucleus material directly into the groove. Indeed, within weeks of this recording Allan Holdsworth would be on board and the jazz-rock vibe cast in stone.

So this recording very much represents Soft Machine in transition. But then, heh, whenever wasn't that the case? Given the gig was recorded on a portable 1970s tape recorder from the front row, the sound is surprisingly good. True, Marshall's clattersome drums are high in the mix and leak splendidly across the sound, but his anarchic style was never a steady pulse; indeed he always seemed to be soloing throughout a performance, creating much of the band's idiosyncratic sound.

So neither one band nor another in the Softs’ canon, but perhaps all the more intriguing for just that.