The Artist: Robert Wyatt
Few careers took stranger turns than Robert Wyatt’s.
Originally the drummer and singer for the psych-jazz outfit Soft Machine, Wyatt was at the heart of the late-’60s Canterbury scene - an English stew of jazz, prog, surrealism and socialism.
But after a fall from a fourth-floor window in 1973 left him paralysed from the waist down, Wyatt reinvented himself. He could no longer drum, so he turned inward.
Rock Bottom was the result. Written during his recovery and completed with the help of his partner, poet Alfreda Benge, it wasn’t just a new chapter - it was a different language.
Tender, fractured, lucid and dreamlike, it marked Wyatt’s rebirth not as a drummer, but as a singular voice in British experimental music.
The Record: Rock Bottom (1974)
Rock Bottom floats in a strange, weightless world of its own.
Synths wobble. Trumpets flare and fade. Wyatt’s voice drifts - childlike, androgynous, ghostly - narrating dreams that might be love songs, might be nightmares.
Opener Sea Song sets the tone: strange, gorgeous, full of feeling. A Last Straw floats with a woozy logic, while Little Red Riding Hood Hit the Road lurches between lullaby and surreal monologue, veering into strange, unsettling territory. And Alifib / Alife feels like Wyatt singing to Alfie in his own private code.
It’s not an easy album. But it’s honest in a way most records aren’t.
There’s no performance here. No sense of cool. Just beauty, absurdity, vulnerability and real emotional weight.
Rock Bottom isn’t the sound of a fall.
It’s the sound of what you find when you land.
Play Now:
🔊 Spotify | Apple Music | YouTube
Start With:
- Sea Song - sad, sweet & surreal
- Alifib - a whispered love letter
- Little Red Riding Hood Hit the Road - brass, chaos and a quiet rage
