Month: May 2023

Having missed Soft Machine’s two North West gigs over Easter, this one-off performance at the Leeds Jazz Festival was my first chance this year to see the band, in a rather unique space, the City Variety halls, once home to the Good Old Days, and retaining much of its olde-worlde charm, tucked away off the main drag on a busy Bank Holiday weekend Friday.

With a new album, the forthcoming ‘Other Doors’ recorded but not yet released (the compere flashed its rather fetching album cover from the stage), there’s a sense of waiting to see what the future will bring after the excellent ‘Hidden Details’ album saw a real musical rejuvenation of the band. Fred Baker and Asaf Sirkis are the ‘new’ rhythm section (although both are far from being strangers to the band), on the announcement of the retirements, post ‘Other Doors’, of stalwarts Roy Babbington and John Marshall. Fred appears throughout the new album, and his virtuosity we know all about on these pages, Asaf less so… First things first – he fits in superbly, with precision and a real sharpness, and although hidden from view from my own vantage point, he has a genuine ‘presence’ sonically, without ever dominating proceedings. I’m really looking forward to seeing more of him.

With over two sets of at least an hour each, the band ran through a blend of old and new: tracks are carefully selected from the back catalogue not for their iconic status, but for how they blend into the narrative of the night’s performance – so, you’ll get Penny Hitch from ‘Seven’ easing the audience in with a warm, enveloping vibe, before the newbie title track ‘Other Doors’ rips things up with the spikiness best associated with later Soft Machine Legacy and current Soft Machine music. ‘Visitors at the Window’ was one of two lengthy improv-based pieces showcased from the new album: its spooked intro, with scratchy percussion, rumbling bass and mellotron sounds from Theo Travis built into a somewhat beastly crescendo.

Theo Travis

‘Tales from Taliesin’ calmed things a little, at least for a while, until John Etheridge’s frantic solo, set only against a drum backbeat provided the night’s first transporative moment. Theo Travis’s superb stretched-out ’14 hour dream’, for me a most un-Soft Machine like track (and revealed tonight to be inspired by tales of the 1967 bash at the Ally Pally) was the obvious first set closer, but in fact was gazumped by one further fling – in a moment of genuine hilarity, Etheridge and Travis were already grinning from ear to ear at a ridiculously adept bass intro to ‘Gesolreut’, before Fred Baker decided to take it up a notch with an outrageous fuzz overtone.          

Fred Baker

Set Two started up with the title track from ‘Bundles’, with outstanding soprano sax from Theo Travis. ‘Fell To Earth’ is the second lengthy improv, a messy mélange of styles and themes, finally concluding with a riff not unlike one of Daevid Allen’s sixties guitar motifs. John Etheridge, who had maintained his trademark droll commentary between tracks – an early comment about missing a ‘B natural’ could easily have been as much a recognition of a persistent insect buzzing above the musician’s heads as a rare bum note – now settled into what is always a highlight: the achingly beautiful twin ballads ‘One Glove’ and ‘Broken Hill’ – proof that whilst fretboard virtuosity can drop the jaw, it’s those simple, beautiful manicured themes that really wrench the gut. The same goes for possibly the most eloquent performance of Hugh Hopper’s ‘Kings and Queens’ I’ve heard, all floating flute and warm bass angles, which might have been the earliest track from the repertoire we’d here, were it not for the stripped down version of ‘Out-bloody-rageous’, with nods to both Mike Ratledge and author of the book of the same name, Graham Bennett. My only gripe here is that throughout the band’s second set the sax in particular appeared way too low in the mix – whilst this allowed some superb rhythm guitar to be showcased, as well as accentuating some quite astonishing bass work, some of the impact of the intricate guitar/sax dual lines were lost to the audience.

I’d been waiting for a rendition of the excellent ‘Hidden Details’ track, and was not disappointed with the set-closer, although an added twist was that rather than finishing with the album’s astonishing guitar solo, the piece instead morphed into the bridge of ‘Hazard Profile’, an unexpected treat. The band barely made it off stage before the encore, which initially seemed to be intent to send the audience on their way in something of a reverie, thanks to a rendition of ‘Out of Season’ from ‘Softs’, but actually graduated onto ‘Grapehound’ from the first Soft Machine Legacy album, a jaunty, upbeat finale.

John Etheridge

The final memorable image of the night – following a visit to the merchandise stall and chats with all the band – was hovering around the venue considering a further drink, only to witness a vision of John Etheridge heading off, guitar slung over shoulder on a warm balmy evening, into the feral Leeds nightscape..

Other Doors is available to order here

Further Soft Machine gigs in the autumn in the US and UK.