Soft Machine

Summary
The Canterbury school of British progressive-rock (one of the most significant movements in the history of rock music) was born in 1962 when Hugh Hopper, Robert Wyatt, Kevin Ayers, Richard Sinclair and others formed the Wilde Flowers. Wyatt, Ayers, Hopper and their new friends Daevid Allen and Mike Ratledge formed the Soft Machine (1966), whereas Sinclair and the others went on to form Caravan. Soft Machine, one of the greatest rock bands of all time, started out with albums such as Volume Two (1969) that were inspired by psychedelic-rock with a touch of Dadaistic (i.e., nonsensical) aesthetics; but, after losing Allen and Ayers, they veered towards a personal interpretation of Miles Davis' jazz-rock on Three (1970), their masterpiece and one of the essential jazz, rock and classical albums of the 1970s. Minimalistic keyboards a` la Terry Riley and jazz horns highlight three of the four jams (particularly, Hopper's Facelift). The other one, The Moon In June, is Wyatt's first monumental achievement, blending a delicate melody, a melancholy atmosphere and deep humanity. The Moon In June will remain in the essential canon of music well after rock music has disappeared. A vastly revised line-up, heavily influenced by Ian Carr's and Keith Tippett's jazz ensembles, that in october 1969 added a four-piece jazz horn section (notably Elton Dean), continued the experiment in a colder, brainy, austere manner, for example with the four-movement suite Virtually (1971), on their fourth album, and the futuristic 1983 (1972), on their sixth album.

Members such as Kevin Ayers, Daevid Allen and Robert Wyatt went on to carve some of the most influential and creative solo careers in the entire history of rock music.

The legend of the Canterbury scene began in a cellar. Robert Wyatt, born in 1945 in Bristol, emigrated to Dulwich (a suburb of London) and settled down in 1956 in Canterbury. At the beginning of the 1960s, he spent his days attending the local "Simon Langston School," while his evenings were spent with classmates Pye Hastings and Richard Coughlan; with them, he played music in the basement of his house. Born from these basement jams were the Wilde Flowers, an amateur group whose sound reflected the leader’s passion for rhythm and blues and jazz.

The Wilde Flower’s lineup would stabilize in 1962 with Wyatt on drums, brothers Brian and Hugh Hopper, and Richard Sinclair. Meanwhile, Daevid Allen (born 1938), already a poet and playwright in Melbourne, arrived in England from Australia. He was an art student that wandered aimlessly for a year around the country. He was fresh with Parisian experience as well; he had played jazz and composed music for William Burroughs in France. He found a room to rent with Wyatt and his “Canterbury College of Art” roommate Kevin Ayers. Misled by the experienced and astute Allen, still teenaged Robert Wyatt decided to follow him on one of his episodes in Paris, leaving the Wilde Flowers in the hands of Ayers.

1963 dates at the “Marquee” by the Daevid Allen Trio (which was comprised of Allen, Hopper, and Wyatt) would eventually surface on Live (Voiceprint, 1993).

The members of the Wilde Flowers at this point were: Ayers, Sinclair (bass), his cousin David (keyboards), Hastings (guitar) and Coughlan (drums). Ayers, born in 1944 in a small village around the area, had grown up in Malaysia, and at sixteen years of age returned to his native Kent, England.

Meanwhile in Paris, Wyatt and Allen were haunting the underground expatriated beatniks. The enterprising Allen, during this time, organized multi-media performances, played piano in bars with Terry Riley, performed with jazz big bands, and eventually fell in love with a poet and journalist named Gilly Smith. It was not long before they reached Hugh Hopper in France. When the three Parisians did return, they were readmitted into the Wilde Flowers, bringing to the band a refined, intellectual style of improvisation and dada-rock. Allen in 1964 also published his first book of poems.

The Wilde Flowers (Voiceprint, 1993) would collect recordings of this group (compositions mainly by the two Hoppers).

In 1965 Ayers migrated to Oxford, where he attended school. Mike Ratledge, at the time, was his classmate there. Ayers would eventually be what divided the group: on one side was Soft Machine (their name derived from the title of a book by Burroughs), with Ratledge (keyboards), Wyatt (drums), Allen (guitar), and Ayers (bass). The other was Caravan, comprised of Hastings, Sinclair and Coughlan.

Soft Machine began quietly, with a formation that resembled that of Nice. In 1966, they came into the UFO Club in London, together with Syd Barrett’s Pink Floyd. In this place they discovered the then unknown American record producer Kim Fowley. He introduced the band to the music industry and (in February 1967) produced their first 45 rpm single: Feelin' Reelin' Squeelin'/ Love Makes Sweet Music (which, incidentally, was recorded in the same studio that Jimi Hendrix was training with his rhythm guitar).

Jet Propelled Photographs (Charly, 1989) is a 1967 recording by the original line-up of Allen, Ratledge, Wyatt and Ayers.

The quartet would soon find themselves in France, where they gained some success with audiences and critics.

After their stay in France, their return to England was disappointing: Daevid Allen had no valid passport, and was forced to remain in France. There, he gave life to Gong. The three survivors (fresh from the triumph of their aforementioned first single) were brought into the presence of Jimi Hendrix through mutual management. They would end up following him, opening for his American tour dates in 1968.

With the help of producer Tom Wilson (who had also worked with Bob Dylan and the Byrds), Soft Machine recorded their first album, The Soft Machine (Probe, 1968), on foreign American soil. Without the presence of Allen, Ayers is the dominant force while Wyatt remains timid. The songs obviously have influence from the Beat Generation, but also draw from psychedelia, the Orient, rosewater jazz, and, underneath the surface, there transpires an earnest irony that owes something to Dada in Paris. This album, in reality, is the embryo of the looming revolutionary music: in it lies the geometrical keyboard lines of Ratledge; the quiet, high register singing of Wyatt; Ayers’ Jazz; psychedelic counterpoints; goggled chants; a forest of endless and percussive drum solos; and intoxicating parts of cocktail style. The first side of the record, which is much more unified, contains two suites: The first is the jazz-psychedelic Hope for Happiness, where Wyatt sings a mantra above a sarabande-driven electric organ. This opening track contains fast passages with changes in pace on the drums performed as if by extraterrestrials. Ayers fits in a long bass solo reminiscent of Hendrix’s Third Stone from the Sun. The second of side one’s suites is the classical So Boot If At All. This track is pointillist, given to free improvisation. Ratledge takes the role of dissonance while Wyatt runs away in a sparkling solo. Already in this first album, they are proving to be one of the most brilliant duets and creative musical improvisers of all time. The song ends in a final hallucinogenic thrill. Side two of the record, which is more fragmented than the first, consists of mostly instrumental songs that take their melodies from the Beats, soul music, and exotic folk; however, they always degenerate into impromptu parties where the trio unleashes their joyful and caustic fantasies. In the second side, Ratledge plays openly, and Wyatt goes wild on drumming sprees, unleashing various levels of speed, acrobatics, and variety. Never before had a drummer changed and mangled rhythms to such an insane extent. This facade is still conceived as a single continuum, where the songs of Ayers (the memorable We Did It Again, the lyric of which is the title repeated ad infinitum, and the psychedelic Why Are We Sleeping, which is spoken by Ayers with an alternating mystic chorus) serve as a return to organic music.

Before the release of the album at the very end of 1968, the members of Soft Machine had time to relax. Ayers deserted to Mallorca with Allen, Ratledge got homesick and headed for England, and Wyatt became fascinated by America’s West-coast. When they recovered, they had switched bass players from Ayers over to Hugh Hopper.

The second album, Volume Two (Probe, 1969), is the prerogative of the two surviving founding members. Wyatt’s touch on this album is pataphysical and impalpable. Ratledge brings to the table a pleasant collage of tricks and imitations. As of 1969, they had forgotten the Beats and Psychedelia in the name of rock, and began preparing for their great leap into the 1970s. As with the first record, this one was created with some artistic immaturity. There is an almost goliardic insipidity, which acts as a warning against taking the creators too seriously. In this record, Wyatt proves that he is still built on the style of the long melodic fantasy (such as A Concise British Alphabet Part 2, which is his first practice in melancholy nonsense). The refrains of the melodies are separated by instrumental sections, which are more or less improvised. The record seems to be influenced more by Zappa than by Dadaism, which can be seen on Pataphysical Introduction, and especially on the shooting festival of Hopper’s winds, side one’s finale, the hallucinogenic Out Of Tunes. Side two is owned by a score of Ratledge’s ideas: the realistic special effects of Fire Engine Passing With Bells, the first hints of their forthcoming excited instrumental jams (Hibou, Anemone and Bear), and the first applications of the minimalism of Terry Riley (the alto sax and organ of Orange Skin Food and the solo organ and bass on A Door Opens And Closes). On this second record, the great variety of solo and collective improvisations already places Soft Machine in the Olympus of the rock world, even if they themselves had not at that point come to know it.

In 1970, with Allen and Ayers roaming in their own musical endeavors, Wyatt and Ratledge were still struggling with Soft Machine: the promising sound of the first two discs had not yet earned them money or fame. Even so, the live performances from this era, with a cast of six or seven performers each, were beginning to attract both public and critical attention. Despite the lack of recorded credibility, Soft Machine were granted the opportunity to record a double album. This album would be a document of the great creative period of the three core members, assisted, as on tour since October of 1969, by saxophonist Elton Dean, clarinetist Jimmy Hastings, and trombonist Nick Evans, who were all members of Keith Tippett’s pseudo-jazz orchestras. With these live performances, woodwind and keyboards took the dominant role, which before were the drums and rhythm. The songs would stretch and shake off of surreal trappings, and the injection of some seriousness into the music foreshadowed the assimilation of certain techniques of the improvised and avant-garde.

Facelift - France & Holland (2022) documents live performances of 1970.

Third (CBS, 1970) is organized, such as the contemporary Ummagumma by Pink Floyd, into four long tracks, each taking up one side of the double album. Ratledge’s signatures are Slightly All The Time, a nice jazz theme played with a mad gallop from gasping keyboards and bloody sax progressions, and Out-Bloody-Rageous, a song inspired by minimalism and structured as a series of variations on a theme. This track consists of an impeccable, driving change between keyboards and winds, a manifesto of cold rationality by an electronic organist. Hopper’s contribution is Facelift, a theme that melts in clouds of orientalism. It is enlivened by horn players’ interludes: in the first part a disjointed soprano sax, alto sax, and trombone are interjected in between sleepy mews. In the second part, a conjuror’s swing flute raves through a lurking bass, and culminates with a jumble of alto sax at the end. These three pieces keep the complexities of the earlier music created by Soft Machine and add a technical leap. The organ of Ratledge is lively, and the music of Hendrix is transformed into a cool jazz-rock. With this record, the drums no longer experience fits of pataphysical madness, and an almost aesthetic use of the wind section is utilized. A sense of maturity hangs over the professional technique now displayed by the musicians on this record. The new sound pioneered on Third is rooted in two major musicians of the avant-garde American era: Riley’s minimalism and the jazz-rock of Miles Davis.

Wyatt is the composer and main performer (he plays all the keyboards) of the beautiful Moon in June, one of the greatest masterpieces of English rock. This song reveals in Wyatt a great composer and arranger as well as brilliant drummer and inimitable singer; in short, he is a very complete musician. His inspiration is unlike Ratledge’s modern influences. In his major composition there is little jazz, and in some cases it is even less musically advanced. But, Wyatt is equipped with an imagination and a humanity that more than makes up for any other deficiencies. The idea of Moon in June is melodic and close to the soul. It is a mantra of undulating psychedelia, but with a languid and resigned tone that suggests mantras and songs undulating psychedelia, but with a languid tone and resigned that suggests an anemic or dreamy chansonnier. The sudden changes of rhythm and ecstatic crescendos of keyboards, faint whispers, and solemn spikes give the music an almost epic tone, but also desperately sad. Here and there, there is a resurgence of entertaining dada, exemplified by a soft humming nonsense and a breakup of the pattern with an irregular rhythm. Moon In June is a free song that keyboards and drums strive to follow in its magical musical evolution. The end comes after an excited instrumental intermezzo through keyboard-noise, insistent bass lines, and minimal notes of a piano on the last dying phonemes of a stentorian falsetto. This long instrumental finale returns to the seductive grace of the early pataphysicists, with a surreal and humorous tone that would always be the fundamental tone of the music of Wyatt.

With this record, Soft Machine built upon the history of every genre of music to achieve that final peak. Upon filtering the music in this record, to be found are traces of abused musical styles, but as with all great works, everything is broken down into a personal vision of art.

Elton Dean, who with this record became a permanent member, greatly influenced the style of the Soft Machine. All tracks, except perhaps Wyatt’s, are inspired more by jazz than any of the previous albums. Following this record, Ratledge took the lead completely, in part due to Wyatt’s exhaustion. The drummer was about to leave the Soft Machine.

The seven-movement Spaced (Cuneiform, 1996) was composed as the soundtrack to a 1969 multi-media event. Ratledge, Hopper and Wyatt (and guesting saxophonist Brian Hopper) re-designed and re-arranged music from the third album using tape loops and other studio devices. The less ambitious pieces (such as Spaced Two) are merely "remixes" of Soft Machine jams, but the music gets as abstract as musique concrete in the watery vibrations of Spaced One, devastated after seven minutes by an excoriating distortion, and especially in the 32-minute of Spaced Four, a colossal fresco of disjointed instrumental sounds bordering on pure cacophony but slowly revealing the perfectly organic jam from which it originated. More mayhem follows, but this time driven by frenzied drums, until it is again obliterated by electronic noise. Few albums of 1969 dared this much.

Noisette (Cuneiform, 2000) documents a 1970 performance by Ratledge, Hopper, Wyatt, Dean and temporary fifth member Lyn Dobson (soprano saxophone and flute) and includes a 12-minute version of Ratledge's Eamonn Andrews, a 14-minute version of Esther's Nose Job and an eleven-minute version of Hopper's 12/8 Theme that rank among the slickest jazz-rock jams of the era.

Soft Machine's Fourth (1971) was their first fully instrumental album. Collaborators included Mark Charig (cornet), Roy Babbington (double bass), Nick Evans (trombone), Jimmy Hastings (flute and clarinet), Alan Skidmore (tenor sax). Wyatt's contribution to the compositions was minimal. Needless to say, the jazz-rock elements were even stronger than on the third album. Ratledge's nine-minute Teeth displayed the dense, flawless amalgam of the instruments, that blended the jubilant reeds, Ratledge's alienated keyboards, Hopper's singing bass and Wyatt's unusually frantic and noisy drumming, and then launched into a shimmering melodic theme. The centerpiece is Hopper's four-movement suite Virtually: a subdued trombone-heavy first part, a vibrant Dean-driven second part, a dissonant free-form third part and a brief abstract keyboards-dominated fourth part.

Wyatt, last remaining of the founding members, left to form Matching Mole and was replaced by Nucleau' drummer, John Marshall. Thus Soft Machine's line-up for 5 (CBS, 1972) was a quartet with Ratledge on keyboards, Hopper on bass, Dean on reeds and (mostly) Marshall on drums. The compositions are mostly by Ratledge e di Dean. They reflect the fact that the psychedelic masters had left one by one, and their place had been taken by practitioners of jazz-rock. Ratledge's All White is the younger brother of the previous album's Teeth: a sprightly theme sustained by playful interplay. The atmospheric music of the Third album is, instead, evoked in Ratledge's Drop, divided between an overture of swirling oneiric keyboards notes upset by dripping electronic sounds and a vibrant alto-sax improvisation over a swinging rhythm section. Textures become even more important in the longer As If, still dominated for four minutes by Dean and then for four minutes by the cello-sounding bass, and lacking a precise leitmotiv. Dean's closing Bone would be the most experimental (or, at least, unreal) track, but it lasts only three minutes. As a conventional jazz-rock outfit, Soft Machine was far less engaging than as a progressive-rock project, but still maintained a high degree of musicianship.

In 1972 Dean too left, making way for keyboardist Karl Jenkins (ex-Nucleus), so that the Sixth Album, (CBS, 1972) is largely a work by Ratledge, although Hopper crafts the best music. The album is double, half live (Gesolreut, 37 1/2) and half studio (The Soft Weed Factor by Jenkins, Chloe And The Pirates by Ratledge, 1983 by Hopper). Ratledge, Hopper, Jenkins, and Marshall alternate between many instruments, in search of "the" transcendental timbre. The style has now escaped from jazz-rock: assimilating a little electronic avant-garde, it has turned into a virtuoso exercise in cold aestheticism. Hugh Hopper, however, has his first solo album ready and leaves Soft Machine.

It is no coincidence that on Seven (CBS, 1973), with the arrival of Roy Babbington on bass, the ensemble comes to include three ex-Nucleus members. Bundles (Harvest, 1975), with the addition of guitarist Allan Holdsworth, contains if nothing else the five-part suite Hazard Profile, but the sound is no longer even related to the old Soft Machine.

In 1976 even Ratledge left Soft Machine. The line-up of Jenkins, Babbington, Marshall, guitarist John Etheridge and saxophonist Alan Wakeman that plays on Softs (Harvest, 1976) did not feature any of the original members. Jenkins leads the band through the austere scores of the seven-minute The Tale Of Taliesin and the nine-minute Ban-Ban Caliban.

Jenkins, Etheridge, Babbington, Marshall and keyboardist Carol Barratt released Rubber Riff (Music DeWolfe, 1978 - Voiceprint, 1995), that was not originally credited to the Soft Machine. Unusually for Soft Machine, it contains 14 brief compositions.

Jenkins and Marshall are the only full-time members on Land of Cockayne (EMI, 1981), which employs a revolving cast of friends (Allan Holdsworth, Jack Bruce, Dick Morrissey, etc). Jenkins signs all the pieces and his keyboards "are" the sound of the longer ones (Over 'n' Above, Panoramania, Hot-Biscuit Slim).

Triple Echo (Harvest, 1977) is a three-album box-set anthology. Several live albums (and especially rare ones from the early period) came out during the 1970s.

BBC Radio (HUx, 2003) is a terrible collection of rarities from the early days.

Out Bloody Rageous is a double-CD career retrospective.

The last studio album with Dean, Softworks (Abracadabra, 2003), was recorded by a quartet with Allan Holdsworth on guitar, Hopper and Marshall.

Grides (Cuneiform, 2006) documents a 1970 live performance.

Hugh Hopper died in 2009.

The Soft Machine Legacy that debuted with Steam (2007) comprised only Marshall and Hopper from the old guard. It was followed by Burden Of Proof (2013), featuring Roy Babbington (bass), John Etheridge (electric guitar), John Marshall (drums) and Theo Travis (tenor sax, flute and organ). The Legacy is also documented on Live At The New Morning (december 2005) and Live Adventures (october 2009).

The Soft Machine line up of Hidden Details (december 2017) and Other Doors (august 2022 - Dyad, 2023) was: John Etheridge on electric guitars, Theo Travis on electronics, tenor and soprano saxes, flute and electric piano, John Marshall on drums and Fred Thelonius Baker on bass.

Marshall died in 2023.