Soft Machine are perceived as cold and forbidding. At their peak in the 1970s, they purposefully raised the hackles of pop journalists, the musical establishment and even their own fans. Their music was designed to exclude all but the most devoted. Their line-up constantly churned, divesting themselves of every player that tried to make a human connection. Instead of the community of live performance, they favoured an abusive blast of ferocious noise.
All of this was true only for a short period of their career and is certainly not the case for more recent incarnations. If the music is given a chance, an entirely different band emerges, one that is sly, spry, tuneful, trippy and surprisingly welcoming, merging a glorious melange of prog rock, jazz fusion and much more.
This book guides you through the maze of the band's works, revealing why every album is worthy of re-evaluation, why they're so influential and why you should rush to assimilate as many of them as you can. It covers the live and studio material released by the parent group, all related projects with a 'Soft' in their name and the essential extracurricular activities of members from 1960 to the present day.
Scott Meze is a psychedelic music obsessive born in Britain but based in Tokyo, the music connoisseur's capital of the world. Soft Machine have been one of the abiding loves of his life ever since a friend played him a tape of Triple Echo while careening his thoroughly chemicalised brain through the hills of South Somerset on the back of a Moto Guzzi 850 Le Mans. You don't ignore an education like that.
