Tuesday 7 April 2026
Band on the Wall, Manchester
★★★★★
Soft Machine launch their new album Thirteen and revisit some classics
Last time I saw Soft Machine’s Theo Travis onstage was nearly a year ago, at a much larger venue, the London Palladium, guesting for Steven Wilson on the latter’s tour of his latest album, The Overview. In return, Wilson let Travis borrow his original Mellotron for use on Soft Machine’s latest album, Thirteen. Manchester’s Band on the Wall was the perfect venue to launch the new album, with excellent sound and an intimate feel that brought us close enough to the musicians to enjoy watching their virtuosic performances as well as hearing them. Guitarist John Etheridge (50 years and counting with the band), who was a genial host throughout, said Band on the Wall was one of the band’s favourite venues.
Travis played sax, flute, and keyboards, and he was joined by new members, Fred Thelonious Baker (bass) and Asaf Sirkis (drums). Etheridge said that although he has been around ‘for a million years’ (he may be exaggerating slightly), Thirteen is the best album he has played on (he may not be exaggerating).
The first half was devoted almost entirely to the new album. The set began with Open Road, a showcase for all four musicians: Etheridge played unbelievably fast runs and spacey chords on guitar, Travis played melodic sax with filigree improvisations, Baker provided a lovely fretless bass solo, and Sirkis’ drumming was viscerally virtuosic.
An early highlight was Seven Hours from the new album. Musicians of this calibre don’t need to follow an album version rigidly, and there are advantages to playing without a complex light show or videos that require precise synchronisation with external media. The song began with evocative flute, bathed in echo, and single guitar notes: a lovely start. Gently discordant guitar duetted with the flute, deliciously avant-garde. Pastoral flute led to military drums and a spacey, psychedelic section. Free jazz improvisation with dystopian guitar, in the mode of King Crimson, was made more ominous by the distant sound of a siren outside the venue; were the Melody Police on their way? Perhaps with this in mind, Travis on sax introduced the melody. Etheridge admitted that this stunning version had ‘at least some of the same notes as on the album.’ It was a fair cop.
The only song in the first set that wasn’t from the new album was The Tale of Taliesin from Softs, the 1976 album that was the first to feature Etheridge on guitar. The track began with a lovely, melodic bass riff offset against the guitar riff. Once Baker safely established the melody, the band took flight in a proggier section, with thunderous drumming from Sirkis. Etheridge’s fingers flew up and down the fretboard so quickly that he sounded like a keyboard player. After this controlled mayhem, Travis slowed the song down at the end, returning to the main theme.
The gorgeous Waltz for Robert had a foot in both old and new Soft Machine camps: it’s a tribute to Robert Wyatt, who left the band in 1971, but it comes from the new album. The song has a lilting melancholy, like the soundtrack to a film noir. Travis’ flute-playing was reminiscent of his playing on the Porcupine Tree track ‘Don’t Hate Me’ from their 1999 album Stupid Dream. Appropriately, Etheridge chose this as a moment to give us a potted history of the band before we went off to partake of ‘benzedrine’ at the interval. He referred to the late John Marshall, who had been replaced by various ‘exceptional’ drummers over the last few years. Of all those drummers, one was ‘exceptional exceptional’: Asif Sirkis.
After we had indulged (or not!) in our interval benzedrine, the second set began with the classic ‘Out-Bloody-Rageous’ from 1971’s Third. Etheridge told us that the track was ‘minutely not in 4/4’ because it was in 15/8 (like the main theme of Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells). Travis replicated the tape loops on the original track by triggering various sequences, smiling gently to himself. Later, he played a beautiful solo, liquid, flowing and melodic. Etheridge introduced 1968’s Joy of a Toy as ‘a unique piece’, the first single the band released in America, in the key of D major, an ‘amazingly un-Soft Machine key!’ Baker played a stunning bass solo with lots of double-stopping.
As Etheridge played the mellow intro of ‘Song of Aeolus’ from Softs (1976), he was joined by a discordant phone sound from the audience. Etheridge provided some deliciously discordant music of his own, using his whammy bar so that his guitar drifted out of tune. There were more echoes of King Crimson musicians: Etheridge’s cascading notes sounded like Robert Fripp’s ‘Frippertronics‘, and Asif’s spectacular drumming was reminiscent of the great Bill Bruford, sounding like a whole percussion section rather than just a drum set.
The final track from the new album was ‘Green Books’, which began with solo funky guitar and a funky sax solo, then a burst of prog and a syncopated jazz section, all the players clearly enjoying themselves here. There was another chance for Travis to shine in his composition ‘Fourteen Hour Dream’ from Hidden Details (2018), playing a spacey, psychedelic flute solo, and later entertaining us with his flutter-tongued virtuosity.
To end, the band played a medley of four tunes, inspired, according to Etheridge, by the piano medleys of Mrs Mills and Winifred Atwell (presumably the idea of a medley rather than the tunes themselves…) The medley featured a song with Etheridge’s favourite title 10.30 Returns to the Bedroom (don’t ask). The medley included an astonishing drum solo from Sirkis, as the others moved to the side of the stage to admire from afar. The solo began gently, but with a restless feel, then Asif demonstrated his phenomenal strength, ending with flourishes that drew well-deserved applause. The medley ended with a funky, strutting riff, worthy of Jimmy Page, from Etheridge, and a triumphant climax from the whole band. The packed house was treated to an optimistic encore, ‘Backwards/Noisette’, which ended in another stunning climax, before the band generously gave their time and their signatures at the merch stall. The band have several more dates in the UK and across Europe on the tour; catch them live if you can.
Soft Machine travel to Switzerland, Italy and Portugal, then play in England in May and June, and the tour continues for the rest of the year. Full details here
Performers
John Etheridge guitar
Theo Travis flute, saxes and keyboards
Fred Thelonious Baker bass
Asaf Sirkis drums
Images taken from previous gigs/tours, courtesy of Theo Travis
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