soft machine Archive
27 Jul 2020
Album Review: Soft Machine – Live at the Baked Potato
The original Soft Machine was a kind of jazz answer to Pink Floyd. Contemporaries of Syd Barrett’s group, they often showed up on the bill with his band. But because the Canterbury group was grounded in jazz – albeit with a rock sensibility – it was destined to remain well outside the commercial sphere in
17 Mar 2015
Album Review: Gong – I See You
Daevid Allen departed this temporal plane a last week. The music legend was best known as one of the founding members of Soft Machine, Canterbury England jazz/rock heroes. To continental fans, he was equally revered for founding and maintaining Gong, the (more or less) French hippie collective. (Oddly enough, Allen was neither British nor French;
05 Mar 2015
Hundred Word Reviews for March 2015, Part 4
Prog, jazz, blues: there’s something for most musical tastes in today’s roundup of hundred-word reviews. Mark Wingfield – Proof of Light If there’s a common raison d’être among the varied acts signed to Leonardo Pavkovic‘s MoonJune label, it’s to explore the sweet spot at which jazz and rock convene. Wingfield’s disc features a trio format
18 Dec 2014
Album Reviews: Hugh Hopper — Memories and Frangloband
Bassist Hugh Hopper gained fame – or what passes for fame within the narrow confines of jazz-rock and progressive circles – as a member of Soft Machine. He passed away in 2009, and it happens, Hopper was apparently quite the busy guy. His estate is now involved in a good bit of closet-cleaning, and the
22 Nov 2013
DVD Review: Going Underground
Sir Paul McCartney had no role in the making of Going Underground: Paul McCartney, the Beatles and the UK Counter Culture. But to the extent he even knows about it, he must surely approve. As he might say, he’s probably “well chuffed” about it. Extending to feature film length the argument that official Macca biographer