Why Did Karl Jenkins Barely Play On Bundles?

So on Soft Machine's Bundles, while Karl wrote most of the music, Allan Holdworth is shown playing most of the solos on that record. There is like 1 or 2 tracks where you could hear any saxophone at all on that record. I do not know, maybe Karl was the one handling most of the keyboards on it while Mike Ratledge was more of an extra for that record. By Bundles, Mike seemed more like the faded "old-man" type of person who is going out of style and all of his friends are now "dead". Hopper, Dean, and Ayers are dead, but strangely, despite losing his ability in his legs earlier on, Robert Wyatt is still alive. 

Bundles certainly felt more like an Alan Holdsworth affair. Gazuese from Gong felt the same. To some extent on Bruford Feels Good To Me and One Of A Kind I received the overall feeling that he dominated several important solos. Even though Jeff Berlin took lead soloing...Holdsworth felt like the end result.

On a personal level Soft Machine Third grabbed the Canterbury magic. 4, 5, 6, and 7 were excellent too, but Bundles took a different direction by adding guitar. I enjoyed Bundles but the idea of adding guitar was a difficult for me at first. The piece which closes the album is "Floating World" which is a return to the ethereal and atmospheric Soft Machine on Six. Obviously there was less experimentation on Bundles . On Soft Machine 5 are sections that sound Electronic and a bit Avant-garde. Seven contained less of that, but yet..as an album flowed more naturally like instrumental Canterbury and probably more than Bundles.

Mirakaze wrote: SuperMetro wrote: I do not know, maybe Karl was the one handling most of the keyboards on it while Mike Ratledge was more of an extra for that record. This is it. If I remember correctly, Mike played the synth solo on part 5 of Hazard Profile and some of the organ parts, and only played electric piano on the two tunes that he composed himself ("Peff" and "The Man Who Waved At Trains") while Karl handled all other keyboard parts on the album. Really I get the impression that Karl by this point really wanted the keyboard to be his main instrument, hence why you don't hear him playing any saxophone or oboe on any subsequent Soft Machine albums. Mike inadvertently became kind of a third wheel as a result (at least in the studio; his synth playing is more prominent in live recordings of the time) so really it's him who played relatively little on Bundles.