Soft Machine
The Canterbury school of British progressive-rock was born when Hugh Hopper, Robert Wyatt, Richard Sinclair, Pye Hastings, Richard Coughlan, Kevin Ayers formed the Wilde Flowers. Sinclair, Hastings and Coughlan went on to form the Caravan, while Wyatt, Ayers, Hopper and their friend Daevid Allen formed the Soft Machine.
The Canterbury school of British progressive-rock was born when Hugh Hopper, Robert Wyatt, Richard Sinclair, Pye Hastings, Richard Coughlan, Kevin Ayers formed the Wilde Flowers. Sinclair, Hastings and Coughlan went on to form the Caravan, while Wyatt, Ayers, Hopper and their friend Daevid Allen formed the Soft Machine.
The Soft Machine
The first two albums by England's legendary Soft Machine, originally released in 1968 and 1969, remain among the most innovative and influential releases of that musically fertile era. These seminal LPs offered a visionary psychedelic-progressive-jazz-rock mix that helped to make the Soft Machine one of Britain's first significant underground bands, as well as a key force in the birth of both progressive rock and jazz-rock. A product of the same fabled Canterbury scene that spawned such beloved …
Third
*180 gram audiophile vinyl. Gatefold sleeve* The 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 Ratle…
Fourth (remastered) LP
180 gram audiophile vinyl pressing. Fourth (from 1971) or 4 is the Soft Machine's first all-instrumental album and features a mix of Free Jazz, straight-ahead Jazz, and gong-like psychedelia. It was also the last of their albums to include drummer and founding member Robert Wyatt."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 structure…
Noisette
Noisette is the third in Soft Machine series, recorded January 4th, 1970 at the same concert as "Facelift" on Third, by the short-lived quintet formation of the group: Elton Dean & Lyn Dobson-reeds, Hugh Hopper-bass, Mike Ratledge-keyboards & Robert Wyatt-drums & vocals. Noisette features the rest of the concert, & showcases a band in transition from their earlier psychedelic/ progressive sound towards the jazz rock sound of Third & Fourth. It features the quintet performing versions of material…
Switzerland 1974
Soft Machine were one of the greatest UK avant/jazz-rock bands of all time and their work, whether their earliest performances as a psychedelic band, who were contemporaries of, and shared stages with Syd Barrett's Pink Floyd and the Jimi Hendrix Experience, all the way to being one of Europe's best known 'fusion' bands, their work continues to be name-checked by today's hip experimentalists. By mid 1973, Soft Machine had gone through a tremendous amount of personnel turnover and a shifting in t…
NDR Jazz Workshop - Hamburg, Germany 1973
Released for the very first time here is the Soft Machine's television broadcast, recorded for Germany's famous "NDR Jazz Workshop" on May 17, 1973. This performance was one of the earliest shows by the quartet of Roy Babbington (electric bass), Karl Jenkins (oboe, baritone sax, soprano sax, electric piano), John Marshall (drums) and Mike Ratledge (electric piano, organ). This was a very high profile appearance by the group and for this performance Soft Machine made it a special show. They perfo…
I Want the Beatles to Play at my Art Center
Music From the Henie Onstad Kunstsenter Archives 1968-2011. This 2LP presents seminal works of music from the nearly 50-year history of Henie Onstad Kunstsenter (HOK). When HOK founder Sonja Henie exclaimed that she wanted The Beatles to play at her art center, in essence she expressed its founding ambition to produce and stage a lively cross-artistic program that captured the contemporary spirit of the day in live form. This release is filled with previously-unreleased material recorded at H…