Soft Machine are an English rock and jazz band from Canterbury formed in mid-1966, named after the novel The Soft Machine by William S. Burroughs.Australian poet, guitarist, singer, composer and performance artist Daevid Allen moved to Paris in 1960. Inspired by the emerging 'Beat Generation' of writer's works he'd discovered whilst working in a Melbourne bookshop he moved into a room in Paris's 'Beat Hotel' and spent time around the city's Latin Quarter. There, he rubbed shoulders with Terry Riley and William S. Burroughs, gaining free access to the area's jazz clubs. Influenced by the music philosophies of Sun Ra he formed the Daevid Allen Trio, a free-jazz outfit which performed in Burroughs' theatre pieces based on that writer's novel 'The Ticket That Exploded'.In 1961 Allen travelled to Canterbury, England, where he met 16 year-old Robert Wyatt (who was the son of his landlord). Their mutual interest in jazz resulted in a few gigs, in London in 1963, as the Daevid Allen Trio (with Hugh Hopper on bass and Mike Ratledge occasionally guesting on piano). Around the same time, Wyatt formed the Wilde Flowers with the Hopper brothers, Hugh and Brian Hopper, with Kevin Ayers on vocals.

Five years after the release of their last studio album, legendary UK musical institution, Soft Machine, return with a brand new CD/LP, Other Doors. Boasting new material and two numbers drawn from their extensive historical repertoire, Other Doors finds the band on their usual fiery form.

Recorded live in Breda, Netherlands in January of 1970, this double LP represents the only existing recording of a very rare and short-lived quintet version of the band. Sax/ flute player Lyn Dobson was the fifth member here, left over from the band’s days as a septet. Just three months later Dobson would move on, leaving the classic Ratledge-Dean-Hopper-Wyatt line-up in place. Dobson’s contributions to a 22-minute long version of Hopper’s “Facelift” as well as “Backwards” are of particular interest here, as is a tentative version of “Out-Bloody-Rageous”, which was still a work in progress at this stage.

Soft Machine est un groupe anglais emblématique du rock progressif des années soixante et soixante-dix. Il a enregistré trois chefs d’œuvre du genre (Volume 1 à Third). Évoluant au fil de sa carrière d’un rock inventif à un jazz-rock plus banal, Soft Machine a abrité au fil de son évolution parmi les musiciens les plus renommés du style, de Daevid Allen à Kevin Ayers, en passant par Robert Wyatt, Mike Ratledge, et Elton Dean. L’essaimage de tous ces talents a alimenté plusieurs générations de groupes européens.

The band name says it all. Three members of this quartet worked at different times in the original Soft Machine (John Etheridge, Hugh Hopper, John Marshall) whilst the fourth (Theo Travis) has assumed the mantle once taken by the late and lamented musician, Elton Dean. They've come up with a program of music that pulls off the not inconsiderable feat of acknowledging the legacy at the same time as it forges ahead in new and distinct ways. The world would be a far more interesting place if more musicians operated on a similar level. Overall this a vibrant, adventurous fusion and free form jazz outing; it stands up well to the band's illustrious history and ought to be on any Soft fan's collection.

Esoteric Antenna are pleased to announce the release of the album by Soft Machine Legacy, "Burden Of Proof". This wonderful new studio album was recorded in Italy in the closing months of 2012 and features John Etheridge (Electric Guitar), Theo Travis (Tenor Sax, Flute, Fender Rhodes), Roy Babbington (Bass Guitar) and John Marshall (Drums and Percussion). Following in the fine tradition of Soft Machine, "Burden of Proof” is arguably Soft Machine Legacy’s finest album to date, featuring a host of outstanding new compositions, along with a new recording and arrangement of Hugh Hopper’s ‘Kings and Queens’ (originally featured on Soft Machine Fourth). The excellence of "Burden of Proof” rests with Soft Machine Legacy.

A powerful rock-edged collaboration from Elton Dean, John Etheridge, Hugh Hopper and John Marshall, four legendary members of jazz-rock pioneers Soft Machine. This album itself is a mixed bag. There are two tracks that sound a bit too much like studio improvisations. There are a couple in conventional head-solo-tail jazz constructions. There is a Softs medley, Mike Ratledge's "Facelift," "As If" & "Slightly All The Time" (titled "Ratlift"). There is a ten-minute Hopper epic with typically Hopperean twists and turns.

In 1969, Soft Machine were commissioned to provide music for a multimedia show at the Roundhouse in London. As Hugh Hopper writes in the liner notes, "they wanted a backing tape of suitably deranged and doomy sounds," and the group (augmented in parts by saxophonist Brian Hopper) delivered suitably abstract music that was high on improvisational challenge and low on melody. This 67-minute CD was compiled from music used in the show. It varies from off-kilter planetarium-type sounds (especially evident in Mike Ratledge's astral electric keyboards) to background-type instrumental jazz-rock to bordering-on-clamorous noisy improv (especially on the 32-minute "Spaced Four"). The sound quality is good, but this is, after all, work that was recorded as a supplement to a performance art event, with a different purpose in mind than home listening…

Fabled jazz-rock group Soft Machine present this heartfelt tribute to one of the greats of British jazz - trumpeter Harry Beckett - covering his stunning "The Dew at Dawn" on this limited edition 7" vinyl, with a cover of a classic Softs tune on the B side. This is the second 7" in My Only Desire Records' Brit Jazz 45s series, which sees some of their favourite contemporary jazz acts each making brand new studio recordings of two classic compositions from the golden era of '60s and '70s British jazz.

The first Soft Machine LP usually got the attention, with its movable parts sleeve, as well as the presence of ultra-talented songwriter Kevin Ayers. But musically, Volume Two better conveys the Dada-ist whimsy and powerful avant rock leanings of the band. Hugh Hopper took over for Ayers on bass, and his fuzz tones and experimental leanings supplanted Ayers' pop emphasis. The creative nucleus behind this most progressive of progressive rock albums, however, is Robert Wyatt. He provides the musical arrangements to Hopper's quirky ideas on the stream-of-consciousness collection of tunes ("Rivmic Melodies") on side one.

Soft Machine's revolving door of personnel changes continued with 1973's Seven, the last Softs album with a numbered title and also the last released by Columbia. Bassist Hugh Hopper was gone, replaced by Roy Babbington, a guest musician on 1971's Fourth who had played bass with Nucleus. Two other Nucleus alumni, keyboardist/reedman Karl Jenkins and drummer John Marshall, were on board as well, and since keyboardist/composer Mike Ratledge was now the band's only founding member (actually, Hopper wasn't an original member either, having replaced Kevin Ayers for Volume Two), the group's links to their early years seemed increasingly tenuous - and would become more so…

The Soft Machine were many things to many people, but to most, the real Soft Machine ceased to exist when founder Robert Wyatt left to work on his conspicuously titled Matching Mole project. This departure is generally credited to the Soft Machine's creative advance away from prog rock and toward jazz fusion. Three years and three records after Wyatt's departure, this creative motion was in full sail, and the release of Six cemented the band in their distant station beyond the gravity of anything that resembled rock and its spacious, cutting-edge sonics and more symmetrical rhythms. The jazz era that began on Fourth and continued through the '70s mutates slightly on Six, from the free improvisational structures used frequently on prior releases into a somewhat more constrained fusion design…

As the Soft Machine moved further away from rock on Third and Fourth, drummer/vocalist Robert Wyatt's dissatisfaction with the band's direction grew and, by the time sessions started for Fifth in late 1971, he had left permanently to form Matching Mole. While the instrumental Fourth had forayed deep into jazz-rock territory, Fifth found the Soft Machine working almost completely in the jazz idiom. At the time of Wyatt's departure, keyboardist Mike Ratledge commented that the band's co-founder had "never enjoyed or accepted working in complex time signatures." However, Wyatt's replacement - Phil Howard - didn't prove to be the kind of timekeeper Ratledge and bassist Hugh Hopper had in mind and his free jazz orientation led to his dismissal during the recording of the album…

Soft Machine's collective skill is hyper-complex and refined, as they are extremely literate in all fields of musical study. Fourth is the band's free purging of all of that knowledge, woven into noisy, smoky structures of sound. Their arcane rhythms have a stop-and-go mentality of their own that sounds incredibly fresh even though it is sonically steeped in soft and warm tones. Obviously there is a lot of skillful playing going on, as the mix of free jazz, straight-ahead jazz, and Gong-like psychedelia coalesces into a skronky plateau. Robert Wyatt's drumming is impeccable - so perfect that it at times becomes an unnoticeable map upon which the bandmembers take their instinctive direction. Mike Ratledge's keys are warm throughout, maintaining an earthy quality that keeps its eye on the space between the ground and the heavens that Soft Machine attempt to inhabit…

Soft Machine plunged deeper into jazz and contemporary electronic music on this pivotal release, which incited The Village Voice to call it a milestone achievement when it was released. It's a double album of stunning music, with each side devoted to one composition - two by Mike Ratledge, and one each by Hopper and Wyatt, with substantial help from a number of backup musicians, including Canterbury mainstays Elton Dean and Jimmy Hastings. The Ratledge songs come closest to fusion jazz, although this is fusion laced with tape loop effects and hypnotic, repetitive keyboard patterns. Hugh Hopper's "Facelift" recalls "21st Century Schizoid Man" by King Crimson, although it's more complex, with several quite dissimilar sections…