Soft Machine
Soft Machine are a British rock band from Canterbury formed in mid-1966 by Mike Ratledge, Robert Wyatt, Kevin Ayers, Daevid Allen and Larry Nowlin. As a central band of the Canterbury scene, the group became one of the first British psychedelic acts and later moved into progressive rock and jazz fusion, becoming a purely instrumental band in 1971. The band has undergone many line-up changes, with musicians such as Andy Summers, Hugh Hopper, Elton Dean, John Marshall, Karl Jenkins, Roy Babbington and Allan Holdsworth being members during the band's history. The current line-up consists of John Etheridge, Theo Travis, Fred Thelonious Baker and Asaf Sirkis.
Soft Machine | |
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| Background information | |
| Origin | Canterbury, England |
| Genres | |
| Discography | Soft Machine discography |
| Years active | 1966–1978 1980–1981 1984 2015–present 1978–1988 (as Soft Heap / Soft Head), 1999–2002 (as Soft Ware), 2002–2004 (as Soft Works), 2003 (as Soft Mountain), 2004 (as Soft Bounds), 2004–2015 (as Soft Machine Legacy) |
| Labels | ABC Probe, Columbia, Harvest, EMI, Major League Productions (MLP) |
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| Website | softmachine |
Though they achieved little commercial success, Soft Machine are considered by critics to have been influential in rock music. Dave Lynch at AllMusic called them "one of the more influential bands of their era, and certainly one of the most influential underground ones". The group were named after the novel The Soft Machine by William S. Burroughs.