Soft Machine are a well-known progressive rock/fusion/jazz rock band, which had many line-up changes over
the years. The most recent line-up consists of the following members:
Roy Babbington on bass guitar,
John
Etheridge on guitar,
Theo Travis on saxophone, flute and piano and
John Marshall on drums. The
current line-up used the name
Soft Machine Legacy, but since this year the band dropped the word 'Legacy'
and are continuing their work and performances with the original name. Due to illness, John Marshall was unable
to tour with the band. Luckily the band found a good replacement drummer, named
Nic France. I've never
seen Soft Machine perform live and didn't know what to expect at all. Would they be playing old material, or only
their most recent work? The Dutch fusion/jazz rock band
Satisfaction Injection had the honour to play before
Soft Machine was going to perform.
Satisfaction Injection
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Ilia Lumbroso |
Matthijs Tuijn started with a spooky ambient/sounds intro which he triggered with his guitar effects. After
the intro the band played real instrumental fusion and jazz rock music, which also reminded me of Soft Machine.
They were a great addition to the evening. Bassist
Jonathan Roorda was the spokesman that evening when
it came to announcements and telling stories about the band. Jonathan told the audience that it was the first
time they played with this recent six piece formation live. The band members really had eye contact with each
other when they played. They also played really tight despite the many theme and rhythm changes. Both Matthijs
and
Bas Warner played good guitar solos. Bas broke one of his strings while playing, but the band continued
to play and improvise while Bas was replacing his guitar string. When he was finished Jonathan asked a round of
applause from the audience for Bas. Jonathan also said that they were going to release a new album called
Special
Medicine. It was already available for the people who were at the gig. The audience really enjoyed their performance
and I enjoyed the show as well. Still, I was secretly waiting for Soft Machine to enter the stage.
Soft Machine
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L to R: John Etheridge & Theo Travis |
The first thing I noticed before the band started to play was that John Etheridge had some of his guitar effects
on his music stand, which is quite extraordinary. What also surprised me was the fact that Theo Travis played
on a keyboard, I've never seen him do that before. John was the spokesman for the band most of the time that evening.
He said that
Voyage Beyond Seven was written mostly by Theo. During that track the band used a lot of sound
effects. When John was playing solos he got really caught up in his performance, which is nice to see. Between
the songs John told the audience more stories about Soft Machine and their members. Next year the band Soft Machine
will be 50 years old. Roy Babbington joined Soft Machine back in 1971, he's very happy that Nic had time to be
|
Nic France |
John Marshall's replacement for the tour and bragged about the fact that Theo toured along with
David Gilmour.
Theo said that John Etheridge joined the band in 1975.
While the band was playing the track
Kings & Queens the members really paid attention to each other.
They played phenomenal, but that's not a surprise of course. After
Kings & Queens John said
that the next song was written by Theo as a tribute for the planet Pluto and a sort of 'memorial', because Pluto
is finally a planet again. After this track Nic played a brilliant drum solo, and the crowd really loved it. When
the band came back on stage for the encore John said that he loves The Netherlands, and mainly for the tea. He
also loved the fact that you can get warm Dutch snacks out of a vending machine. The encore started with a great
bass solo from Roy. While Roy kept on playing John thanked the venue, the venue's crew, the tour manager and the audience.
You can see that the band really enjoys to play live and that they are very talented musicians. The band played
tracks from both their recent albums and older work, which is absolutely fantastic! They only played for 1,5 hours,
I hoped that they would play a little bit longer, because I really enjoyed their music and their performance.
I hope this band will come back again for an anniversary tour!
Iris Hidding (edited by Astrid de Ronde)