Third is a 1970 double LP by Soft Machine, with each side of the original vinyl consisting of a single long composition. Its music explores the emerging jazz fusion of the type present on Miles Davis' Bitches Brew, which was released just a few months earlier. Third marks the most major of Soft Machine's several shifts in musical genre over their career, completing their transition from psychedelic musicto jazz, and is a significant milestone of the Canterbury scene, featuring interplay between the band's personnel: Mike Ratledgeon keyboards, Robert Wyatton drums, Hugh Hopperon bass and newest member Elton Deanon saxophone. Lyn Dobson appears on saxophone and flute on "Facelift", recorded while he was a full member of the band (then a quintet), although he is credited as an additional performer. Jimmy Hastings(brother of Pye Hastingsfrom Caravan)makes substantial contributions on flute and clarinet on "Slightly All The Time", free-jazz violinist Rab Spall (then a bandmate of Wyatt's in the part-time ensemble Amazing Band) is heard on the coda to "Moon In June", and Nick Evans(a member of the band during its short-lived septet incarnation) makes a very brief appearance on trombone in "Out-Bloody-Rageous".
In the Q & Mojo Classic Special Edition Pink Floyd & The Story of Prog Rock(2005), the album came #20 in its list of "40 Cosmic Rock Albums".