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Soft Machine- what else sounds like them?

All Acting Regiment

19:52 / 04.04.04

I've just got fourth/fifth on cd, and I love it. I've never heard anything quite like soft machine, which means that I need to get some stuff that is. Can anyone make any recomendations?

karen eliot

01:27 / 06.04.04

Check out Supersister. Their stuff is not all that easy to find but they are a great Softs type group. Also mebbe Hatfield & the North though I'm not as crazy about them. If you use Soulseek you should be able to check them both out with little difficulty.

rizla mission

09:57 / 06.04.04

Well general opinion has it that the first 3 Soft Machine records are much better than the 4th and 5th ones, so I guess you'll be wanting to check those out..

Also, my current fave band Oneida get a lot of Soft Machine comparisons, presumably due to their concentration on madly intense keyboard/drum workouts and psychedelic singing.. they're a lot faster and, well, crazier than the 'Machine but you should still totally listen to them as they're one of the best rock bands in the world right now, IMHO.

lord nuneaton savage

19:01 / 07.04.04

Rizla you are usually on point, however nothing is "faster and crazier" than "Lullaby letter" off the first Soft's album.
If it's a bit of the jazzy, later period soft machine stuff you're after, try a band called Nucleus. They feature several ex-Soft Machine members and are rather lovely, in a wooly jumper kind of way.
If you want jazzier still try listening to Chris Macgregor's Brotherhood of Breath.

rizla mission

20:30 / 07.04.04

Point taken.

Coincidentally, I managed to get the Soft Machine BBC sessions CD (or rather two Cds) out of the library today, and it's fucking amazing!

I've been wanting to get it for a while, cos it's got a version of 'Moon in June' with Robert Wyatt singing fantastic semi-improvised lyrics about how much fun it is recording at the BBC, and it's just absolutely beautiful ("..and there's a tea machine, right along the corr-idor.." - I mean, a 'tea machine', how amazing is that..)

But anyway, er yeah, you should get it as a matter of urgency Chris.

munchausen biproxy

21:24 / 08.04.04

There's a French band called Gong that's related to Soft Machine in some way (I think the two bands share at least one member). Their best stuff is a trilogy of albums, "Radio Gnome," "Angel's Egg," and "You."

I'd also reccomend Arthur Brown, as in The Crazy World of Arthur Brown, but he has some other, lesser-known albums. One is Adventure, by Arthur Brown's Kingdom Come (or maybe it's Kingdom Come by Arthur Brown's Adventure), which is very trippy.

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