Soft Machine

Picture yourself in, of all places, Flint, Michigan, about a year ago, in a big smelly auditorium, sitting, with a few thousand other people, at a Jimi Hendrix concert. You’ve just endured a couple of local groups, and you’re waiting for the next band to start, some English group you’ve never heard of called the Soft Machine. Somebody’s been reading William Burroughs, you think. How underground. Well, the curtain opens, and there are three people sitting motionless. Just sitting. You notice the drummer first, blond, and looking really stoned, or perhaps merely insane. The organist is wearing an odd hat and seems quite evil. And the bass player just sits there.

All of a sudden there’s a loud deep drone and some high whining voice with a million unearthly overtones, and then things start crashing and pounding and pulsating and throbbing, and by the time you become conscious again, Hendrix’s bellydancing and contortions are rather dull, and you realize that the Soft Machine is the most exciting group you’ve ever heard.

That was my first encounter with the Soft Machine. They’re completely unique. I suppose one could call their music jazz. Then again, one could call it psychedelic rock. I don’t think I’ll try pigeonholing it. Let me ^ describe the individual musicians instead.

Michael Ratledge, the organist, is definitely not a jazz organist, to my mind, because every jazz organist I have heard has gottenn bogged down in a bluesy, funky style—which is nice, of course. But Ratledge has gone far past that, has ventured into much weirder things, noise effects, atonality and such, using the possibilities of the organ nuch more effectively than most. He uses distortion, and bends notes, and sometimes just seems to wring, by sheer brute force, the strangest honks, squeals and shrieks out of his organ. It’s like Pharoah Sanders and Archie Shepp and Sonny Rollins all playing simultaneously. He also tends to be very sloppy and imprecise at times, but then, that’s generally characteristic of the Soft Machine.

Robert Wyatt is the lead singer and drummer. There are no criteria by which to judge his voice: either you dig it or you hate it. Either way, you’ll never hear another like it, and I think it’s great. He’s no Arthur Brown, but he does some very beautiful things within the limitations of his restrained, somewhat India-influenced vocal style. As a drummer, he’s even more interesting. He’s terribly fast, kind of sloppy too, and extremely imaginative, always throwing off a garrage of fascinating (and, on examination, surprisingly well-organized) sounds, very driving. He orchestrates like a rock drummer, phrases like a jazz drummer.

Definitely, the least interesting of the three as a musician is—or was: I’ve heard he left the group—Kevin Ayres, the bassist. This is due in part to the nature of the bass, but also to the fact that Ayres seems to be a bit underdeveloped technically. He handles himself nicely on stage however, perhaps the best of the three in that respect, and can be rather enjoyable. Some tasteful chording, at times, for instance, and a really great lead in the middle of “Hope for Happiness.”

Last summer, they also added a lead guitar player. I understand he’s recently broken with them (a pity) and I know very little about him, except that his name is Andy, and judging from the one live tape on which I have heard him, may be one of the greatest guitarists in the world. His technique is awe-inspiring, and what he does with it is stunning, completely transcending the rut into which Clapton and Beck and just about everyone else have fallen, the old blues-oriented harmonic structures. We need Andy pretty bad.

It’s a year later from that concert in Flint, and they have an album out now, and it’s beautifully representative of the Soft Machine. The jacket is marvellously done, the recording quality and production job are fantastic. The music is consistently superb (though, yes, it’s occasionally rather sloppy) and they’ve made brilliant use of some of the possibilities of the recording medium, especially the stunning double-tracking on Wyatt’s voice, and use of stereo effects. It’s a great group and a great album. I hope they get very rich and fat and smug, because they deserve it. I also hope they keep turning out albums and concerts, because I’m addicted.