Time continues faithfully like an infallible machine, unstoppable, perfectly calculated where little or nothing escapes its effects. It seems a lie that in music time has been altered and that it deliberately passed along without harming the immortal memory of the ‘human body’. We’re talking about the precursors of ‘psychedelia’, the music that inspires over the years, the acid sounds, the genius and insanity, the counterculture’s chemical challenge of mixing water and oil, mixing jazz with the progressive .

We refer to the biggest band in history, and when I say big I mean by the number of musicians who were its members. The list of bands and artists associated with this ‘Soft Machine’ is so enormous as its history. One of the bands we associate in the first place is ‘The Wild Flowers’, mythical Canterbury band that we might identify as hotbed of great geniuses because from it emerged ‘The Soft Machine’ as well as another great band: ‘Caravan’, and from these two other bands came out like ‘Gong’ or ‘Matching Mole’ to name just a couple of them.

From the artists associated with The Soft Machine we find, just to name a few, names like Andy Summers (The Police), Alan Skidmore, Daevid Allen, Kevin Ayers, Robert Wyatt, Allan Holdsworth, Lyn Dobson, Roy Babbington, John Etheridge, Nick Evans, Jimmy Hastings, John Marshall, Mike Ratledge, Hugh Hopper, Brian Hopper, Marc Charig, Elton Dean, Phil Howard, Ray Warleigh, Karl Jenkins, Alan Wakeman and Syd Barrett. Yes, the very Syd Barrett already in full dementia.

‘The Soft Machine’ name by which the wonderful human body is also known, was an ideal title for a band able to procreate other legends such as the human body with its cells, this band also would renew over and over again under the same genetic instructions that shaped its DNA. When a music lover intends to talk about those bands that were the base of music as we know it today, he can not ignore the legacy that The Soft Machine left. This English band -born back in 1966 in Canterbury, is an important piece in the center of a musical cosmogony of today’s rhythms and sounds, a lot of the music we know and enjoy today, pursues the trail left by this and other bands in those golden years of the counterculture and psychedelia, The Soft Machine being perhaps the most ‘underground’ of them all, may be why this band did not receive all the recognition it deserves.

Formed in the first place by drummer and vocalist Robet Wyatt, keyboardist Mike Ratledge, guitarist Daevid Allen and bassist, vocalist and guitarist Kevin Ayers, always remained with the same bet of mixing as many musical genres known, always exploring, always creating, always progressing without any complex or any paradigm. Constantly evolving. It is almost impossible to categorize this band style: Is it Jazz Fusion?, Progressive Rock?, Psychedelic Rock ?… I would call it Progressive Jazz, but every one will have their own opinion. The truth is that every one of their albums represent a gem worthy of an in-depth analysis.

True to style, during its history the band changed members and rhythms in the same song. Sometimes quartet, sometimes quintet. Through it endlesly marched a lot of geniuses, some more recognized than others and the band remained to be a laboratory without any written rules where everyone could experiment freely their most bizarre ideas. Some came, then left, then returned again, but everyone contributed and always printed a tattoo on the skin of this body, so multifaceted and complex such as the human mind.

If there are people who find the first albums of Pink Floyd or the Beatles as too strident, with the music of The Soft Machine they’ll surely find the epicenter of extravagance. No, this music is not tobe understood, it is to be enjoyed, to let go and wander in that ocean of constant inspiration and virtuosity that these artists reflected in their work by giving the power to play with emotion and imagination to anyone who dares to open a door to that world of abstract sounds.

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Pequeño Documental

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Montreux Jazz Festival 1974

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