Soft Machine at Leeds Jazz Festival at Leeds City Varieties

Soft Machine is one of the greatest UK avant/jazz-rock bands of all time. From early performances as a psychedelic band when they were contemporaries of, and shared stages with, Syd Barrett’s Pink Floyd and the Jimi Hendrix Experience, all the way to being one of Europe’s best known fusion bands, Soft Machine has influenced several generations of bands and continues to be name-checked by today’s hip experimentalists.

The band has two members of the celebrated 70s version of the legendary group which recorded the acclaimed Softs album in 1975, completed by outstanding sax star Theo Travis (Robert Fripp/David Gilmour/Gong) and drummer Asaf Sirkis (Jacob Collier/Larry Coryell). The band plays material from the era (compositions by Hugh Hopper, Mike Ratledge and Karl Jenkins), as well as many contemporary works as featured on their album Hidden Details, released in 2018, exactly 50 years since the release of the band’s 1968 debut album The Soft Machine....

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Soft Machine is one of the greatest UK avant/jazz-rock bands of all time. From early performances as a psychedelic band when they were contemporaries of, and shared stages with, Syd Barrett’s Pink Floyd and the Jimi Hendrix Experience, all the way to being one of Europe’s best known fusion bands, Soft Machine has influenced several generations of bands and continues to be name-checked by today’s hip experimentalists.

The band has two members of the celebrated 70s version of the legendary group which recorded the acclaimed Softs album in 1975, completed by outstanding sax star Theo Travis (Robert Fripp/David Gilmour/Gong) and drummer Asaf Sirkis (Jacob Collier/Larry Coryell). The band plays material from the era (compositions by Hugh Hopper, Mike Ratledge and Karl Jenkins), as well as many contemporary works as featured on their album Hidden Details, released in 2018, exactly 50 years since the release of the band’s 1968 debut album The Soft Machine.

Whilst the line-up of Soft Machine may have changed many times since the heady days of the late 1960s, the band’s spirit of musical adventure and the ease with which it freely avoids being pigeon-holed and can move from powerful progressive jazz fusion to atmospheric psychedelia to free improvised jazz-rock to ambient loop music, continues to make it both unique and totally contemporary.

John Etheridge: guitar
Theo Travis: tenor sax, flute and keyboards
Fred Baker: bass
Asaf Sirkis: drums

‘Soft Machine were the grooviest, coolest psychedelic band of the era’ Phil Manzanera

‘The band, of course, has a broad palette — from Metheny-like jazz-rock to anything-goes improvisation; from pastoral passages with Etheridge on acoustic to an ambient flutescape from Travis. Compact and to the point, nothing overstays its welcome’ Times

‘the current incarnation of the band is actually bloody good’ Jazz Journal 2020

Soft Machine @Leeds City Varieties Friday 26 May 7pm tickets £23 concessions £21

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