Soft Machine
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- For the book by William S. Burroughs, see The Soft Machine.
The Soft Machine were a pioneering British psychedelic, progressive rock and jazz band from Canterbury, Kent, England, named after the book The Soft Machine by William S. Burroughs. They were one of the central bands in the Canterbury scene.
Soft Machine had emerged out of an earlier band called Wildeflowers (a reference to Oscar Wilde). The Wildeflowers line-up included, at various times: Brian Hopper (guitar, saxophone, flute, vocals), Hugh Hopper (bass), Robert Wyatt (drums, vocals), Richard Sinclair (guitar, vocals), Kevin Ayers (vocals), Pye Hastings (guitar, vocals), Dave Sinclair (keyboards) and Richard Coughlan (drums). These latter four formed another successful Canterbury band Caravan.
When the band became Soft Machine, its initial lineup featured Kevin Ayers (bass), Robert Wyatt (drums, vocals), Daevid Allen (guitar) and Mike Ratledge (keyboards). Allen left before their first album, and Ayers was replaced by Hugh Hopper by the time of the second. Allen later formed Gong.
The best-known lineup, containing Wyatt, Ratledge, Hopper, and saxophonist Elton Dean, produced the critically-acclaimed album Third and its follow-up Fourth. At that time Soft Machine was playing a form of fusion jazz influenced by Miles Davis and similar to the early work of Weather Report. Wyatt, disagreeing with a direction that left no room for his vocal experiments, left the band in 1971 for a solo career. Later line-up changes left Ratledge the only original member of the band, and by 1976 he was gone too. Karl Jenkins (keyboards and woodwinds), who had joined in 1972, became the band's leader and led it until its disbanding in 1984; guitarist Allan Holdsworth was a member during this period. (Today, Karl Jenkins is better known for classically oriented projects such as Adiemus.) Ric Sanders (later a member of Fairport Convention) was on "Alive and Well" (1978).
Bands which have grown out of Soft Machine (or the WildeFlowers) include Caravan, Kevin Ayers and the Whole World, Hatfield and the North, Gong, Matching Mole, Egg, National Health and Robert Wyatt. Henry Cow came out of Canterbury but not out of Soft Machine.
Partial discography
- The Soft Machine (1968)
- Volume Two (1969)
- Third (1970)
- Fourth (1971)
- Face and Place Vol. 7 (1972)
- Fifth (1973)
- Sixth (1973)
- Seven (1973)
- The Soft Machine Collection (1973 compilation of The Soft Machine and Volume Two)
- Bundles (1975)
- Softs (1976)
- Rubber Riff (1976)
- At the beginning (1977)
- Triple Echo (1977)
- Alive & Well: Recorded in Paris (1978)
- Land of Cockayne (1981)
- Live at the Proms (1970) (1988)
- Jet-Propelled Photographs (1989)
- The Complete Peel Sessions (1970) (1990)
- The Untouchable Collection (1975-78) (1990)
- As If (1991)
- BBC Live in Concert 1971 (1993)
- BBC Radio 1 Live In Concert 1972 (1994)
- Live at the Paradiso (1995)
- Spaced (1995)
- Live In France (1995)
- The Best Of Soft Machine...The Harvest Years (1995)
- Virtually (1998)
- Live 1970 (1998)
- Noisette (2000)
- Man in a Deaf Corner: Anthology 1963-1970 (2001)
- Turns On Vol. 1 (2001)
- Turns On Vol. 2 (2001)
- Backwards (2002)
- Facelift (2002)
- Kings Of Canterbury: Soft Machine (2003)
- BBC - Radio 1967 - 1971 (2003)
- BBC - Radio 1971 - 1974 (2003)