![]() That kind of whimsical and highly observational approach would later become a template for Hatfield And The North and other bands that would be gathered together under the ‘Canterbury scene’ banner. He sings: "I’m nearly 5 ft 7 tall / I like to smoke and drink and ball / I’ve got a yellow suit that’s made by Pam / And every day I like an egg and some tea / But best of all I like to talk about me!” His self-referential lyrics on Why Am I So Short? brilliantly depart from normal boy-meets-girl territory, preferring instead to wryly examine himself as though he were a specimen under a microscope. ![]() Wyatt would never dominate another Soft Machine album to the extent that he does here. That kind of presentation made seeing them a whole experience.” Their live sets were just continuous, and that was rather innovative and wonderful – the way they mixed it up together. “It was just an excuse to have a great long jam of course, but it was great conceptually – almost a kind of systems music. “What was great live was We Did It Again,” says Manzanera, recalling the band’s propensity to turn in versions of the tune that on at least one famous occasion lasted for 45 minutes. However, the band’s instrumental prowess is incidental to the process rather than an end in itself. Powered by Wyatt’s explosive, expressive drumming and the fuzz- enhanced shriek and skirl of Mike Ratledge’s keyboards, The Soft Machine serves up a kind of genetically-mutated forward-looking pop that draws upon jazz and classical music with a cavalier disregard for any restrictions. And when you have a hit record you always have to play it the same way and for us there was no way we were going to play a tune the same way twice.” Pop music didn’t offer enough open space for improvisation. Our music didn’t fit into an already existing format. We never looked to other groups for inspiration, in fact we were listening to Coltrane records. Speaking to author Mike King in Wrong Movements A Robert Wyatt History (published by SAF, 1994) Wyatt said: “In terms of how we amplified our music we were a rock group, but what we heard in our heads wasn’t pop music. “They had such a combination of sounds – a particular blend that had Mike Ratledge’s jazzy keyboards, Robert, who’s totally into jazz but loves pop, and then you’ve got Kevin who is much more song-orientated.” That was fantastic,” says life-long Soft Machine fan, Roxy Music’s Phil Manzanera. “I recall seeing them at Christmas On Earth Continued, a large event in 1967 at Olympia which had bands like Pink Floyd, Eric Burdon And The Animals, Tomorrow, Jimi Hendrix Experience etc. They played regularly in Paris and St Tropez, and provided soundtracks for ballets, art installations, free theatre and ‘happenings’. They started Soft Machine with Allen, but the Australian left before the recording of their first album.įrom the start, Soft Machine aligned themselves to all kinds of artistic movements both at home and abroad. ![]() Wyatt and Ratledge also played at various times in a backing group for the poet/songwriter Daevid Allen. Wyatt and Ayers had played together in the Wilde Flowers, which would also include future members of Caravan. The group formed in 1966 in Canterbury, Kent. But the band also operated on the frontier of art, sound and light. ![]() Soft Machine were the place where different styles of music including free jazz, psychedelic rock and whimsical pop converged. Coming at a time when extraneous psychedelic effects were pretty much de rigueur, Soft Machine’s take on such grooviness isn’t the usual cosmically-inclined peace-and-love audio embroidery, but something far grittier, confrontational and experimental. From this wreckage, atonal keyboard chords fly side-by-side with reverb-drenched drums and tape-manipulated sounds, all eerily manifesting out of thin air like an angry poltergeist wreaking havoc from inside a box of toys.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |