Soft Machine
Soft Machine were, with Caravan, the founders of the Canterbury school of British progressive rock. They grew out of the Wilde Flowers, the mid-1960s group that also seeded Caravan, when Robert Wyatt, Kevin Ayers, Hugh Hopper and the Australian Daevid Allen split off in 1966 and took their name from a William Burroughs novel. The psychedelic pop of the first albums gave way, as Wyatt, Mike Ratledge and Elton Dean steered the band, to a fluid jazz-rock built on repeating keyboard figures and long instrumental stretches; Third (1970), a double album of four side-long pieces, is the landmark.
Soft Machine were, with Caravan, the founders of the Canterbury school of British progressive rock. They grew out of the Wilde Flowers, the mid-1960s group that also seeded Caravan, when Robert Wyatt, Kevin Ayers, Hugh Hopper and the Australian Daevid Allen split off in 1966 and took their name from a William Burroughs novel. The psychedelic pop of the first albums gave way, as Wyatt, Mike Ratledge and Elton Dean steered the band, to a fluid jazz-rock built on repeating keyboard figures and long instrumental stretches; Third (1970), a double album of four side-long pieces, is the landmark.
