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| 1. | Facelift
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| 2. | Eamonn Andrews
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| 3. | Backwards/Mousetrap Reprise
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| 4. | Out-Bloody-Rageous
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| 5. | Robert Wyatt
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| 6. | Esther's Nosejob
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Soft Machine grew out of a meeting between two former members of the legendary Canterbury band The Wilde Flowers (Robert Wyatt and Kevin Ayers) An Australian beatnik (Daevid Allen) and an Oxford University student (Mike Ratledge) in 1966. Once the band had got together courtesy of a financial benefactor who agreed to finance the band they contacted William Burroughs to ask his permission to use the name The Soft Machine. Burroughs agreed and the band was in business. Along with other bands including Pink Floyd Soft Machine were at the vanguard of the new London Underground music scene and regularly played gigs at celebrated clubs like UFO and more famously at the launch of the International Times magazine at the Roundhouse. The band were signed to Polydor records and recorded a single which featured a track called Feelin'Reelin' Squeelin' which featured the talents of Jimi Hendrix who was a Soft Machine fan. The single however was unrepresentative of the bands sound, which leaned heavily on free form improvisation. Following a gig in St. Tropez the band returned to England however Daevid Allen was refused entry to the country due to visa problems and the band were forced to carry on as a trio. Allen stayed in France and went on to form Gong while the remaining members of Soft Machine went on to tour America supporting Jimi Hendrix where during a short break in the tour the band recorded their debut album which was released by Probe records in America. Following the tour Kevin Ayers left the band and took up residence in Ibiza.
The band recruited Hugh Hopper as their new bassist and made another album entitled Soft Machine 2. By the time of the bands third and fourth albums (Soft Machine Third and Soft Machine Fourth) the band had moved into a jazz-fusion direction.
This DVD captures THE Canterbury Sound legends Soft Machine live in France filmed at a concert for French television in 1970. The line up of the band at the time of this concert included, Mike Ratledge, Robert Wyatt, Hugh Hopper, Elton Dean and Lyn Dobson. The concert took place on the 2nd of March 1970 at the Theatre de la Musique in Paris. This rare footage has only recently been rediscovered and as such is a rare insight into one of the classic British genre defining bands of the sixties and seventies captured at their creative height. Tracks include Out-Bloody-Rageous, Eamonn Andrews, Facelift and Esther’s Nose Job.
Filmed in superb clear quality this DVD will be eagerly anticipated by the fan base of this uniquely British band.
Licensed courtesy of Joe Sweetinburgh at Impressiverecs.com - Impressive Records [ Consultants ] LLP
Reviews
"Recorded in Paris on the 2nd March 1970 this film, directed by Claude Ventura and presented by Patrice Blanc-Francard, was initially recorded for Pop 2 and, in keeping with the avant-garde nature of the band in question, is filmed in a rather unusual way, either from the side or the back of the stage, don’t let this put you off however as the sound is fine...and the visuals, whilst odd, are also perfectly good. Featuring, what some consider to be, the finest Soft Machine line-up – the band behind Third - with Robert Wyatt, High Hopper, Mike Ratledge, Elton Dean and Lyn Dobson and an audience so up for it attempts are made to dance like chickens on hot-plates to even the most arrhythmic and atonal passages...given that there’s precious little decent footage of this line-up in existence – Wyatt would leave/be fired (delete as applicable) very soon after this and form Matching Mole - this really is manna from heaven for fans."
---Andy Basire, Total Music Magazine, April 2008
The Soft Machine: Alive In Paris 1970
Voiceprint VPDVD45 * * * *
A love affair with France preserved on film
Shot with tangible cinematic flair at Paris' photogenic Theatre De La Musique in March 1970 this superb quality live footage of the Softs at their freewheeling peak was originally broadcast on French Television's Pop 2 slot in two 30 minute segments in the wake of the band's extensive French tour of February and March 1970. Like the sounds fashioned onstage by Messrs Wyatt, Hopper, Ratledge, Dean and Dobson the visual style here is both highly fluid and refreshingly free of the stylistic cliches all too familiar from countless lookalike in concert films. Interestingly, the one thing the footage conspicuously lacks is a surplus of conventional head on camera angles with instead vantage points from side stage and from behind Robert Wyatt's drum kit and the band's backline much in evidence. With the Softs flying high sans safety net and previewing material from their upcoming album Third, the audience in raptures, Robert Wyatt looking like the younger brother of Brian Jones and the sight of Orangina bottles decorating the top of the amps this is a hugely evocative period piece made all the more vivid by the warm hues of the colour film stock. They sure don't make 'em like this any more.
---Grahame Bent, Record Collector, April 2008
Soft Machine
Active Decades: '60s and '70s
Born: 1966
Died: 1976
Genre: Rock
Styles: British Psychedelia, Canterbury Scene, Experimental, Fusion, Jazz-Rock, Modal Music, Prog-Rock/Art Rock, Psychedelic
Soft Machine were never a commercial enterprise and indeed still remain unknown even to many listeners who came of age during the late '60s, when the group was at its peak. In their own way, however, they were one of the more influential bands of their era, and certainly one of the most influential underground ones. One of the original British psychedelic groups, they were also instrumental in the birth of both progressive rock and jazz-rock. They were also the central foundation of the family tree of the "Canterbury Scene" of British progressive rock acts, a movement that also included Caravan, Gong, Matching Mole, and National Health, not to mention the distinguished solo careers of founding members Robert Wyatt and Kevin Ayers.
Considering their well-known experimental and avant-garde leanings, the roots of Soft Machine were in some respects surprisingly conventional. In the mid-'60s, Wyatt sang and drummed with the Wilde Flowers, a Canterbury group that played more or less conventional pop and soul covers of the day. Future Soft Machine members Ayers and Hugh Hopper would also pass through the Wilde Flowers, whose original material began to reflect an odd sensibility, cultivated by their highly educated backgrounds and a passion for improvised jazz. In 1966, Wyatt teamed up with bassist/singer Ayers, keyboardist Mike Ratledge, and Australian guitarist Daevid Allen to form the first lineup of Soft Machine.
This incarnation of the group, along with Pink Floyd and Tomorrow, were the very first underground psychedelic bands in Britain, and quickly became well loved in the burgeoning London psychedelic underground. Their first recordings (many of which only surfaced years later on compilations of 1967 demos) were by far their most pop-oriented, which doesn't mean they weren't exciting or devoid of experimental elements. Surreal wordplay and unusually (for rock) complex instrumental interplay gave an innovative edge to their ebullient early psychedelic outings. They only managed to cut one (very good) single, though, which flopped. Allen, the weirdest of a colorful group of characters, had to leave the band when he was refused reentry into the U.K. after a stint in France, due to the expiration of his visa.
The remaining trio recorded its first proper album in 1968. The considerable melodic elements and vocal harmonies of their 1967 recordings were now giving way to more challenging, artier postures that sought -- sometimes successfully, sometimes not -- to meld the energy of psychedelic rock with the improvisational pulse of jazz. The Softs were taken on by Jimi Hendrix's management, leading to grueling stints supporting the Jimi Hendrix Experience on their 1968 American tours. Because of this, the group at this point was probably more well-known in the U.S. than their homeland. In fact, their debut LP was only issued, oddly, in the States. For a couple of months in 1968, strangely enough, Soft Machine became a quartet again with the addition of future Police guitarist Andy Summers, although that didn't work out, and they soon reverted to a trio. The punishing tours took their toll on the group, and Ayers had left by the end of 1968, to be replaced by Wyatt's old chum Hugh Hopper.
Their second album, Volume Two (1969), further submerged the band's pop elements in favor of extended jazzy compositions, with an increasingly lesser reliance on lyrics and vocals. Ratledge's fuzzy, buzzy organ and Wyatt's pummeling, imaginative drumming and scat vocals paced the band on material that became increasingly whimsical and surrealistic, if increasingly inaccessible to the pop/rock audience. For their third album, they went even further in these directions, expanding to a seven-piece by adding a horn section. This record virtually dispensed with vocals and conventional rock songs entirely, and is considered a landmark by both progressive rock and jazz-rock aficionados, though it was too oblique for many rock listeners.
Soft Machine couldn't afford to continue to support a seven-member lineup, and scaled back to a quartet for their fourth album, retaining Elton Dean on sax. Wyatt had left by the end of 1971, briefly leading the similar Matching Mole, and then establishing a long-running solo career. In doing so he was following the path of Kevin Ayers, who already had several solo albums to his credit by the early '70s; Daevid Allen, for his part, had become a principal of Gong, one of the most prominent and enigmatic '70s progressive rock bands.
For most intents and purposes, Wyatt's departure spelled the end of Soft Machine's reign as an important band. Although Soft Machine was always a collaborative effort, Wyatt's humor, humanism, and soulful raspy vocals could not be replaced. Ratledge and Hopper kept the group going with other musicians, though by now they were an instrumental fusion group with little vestiges of their former playfulness. Hopper left in 1973, and Ratledge, the last original member, was gone by 1976. Other lineups continued to play under the Soft Machine name, amazingly, until the 1990s, but these were Soft Machine in name only.
---Richie Unterberger, All Music Guide |
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