Soft Machine launch their new album Thirteen and revisit some classics
Soft Machine: John Etheridge, Theo Travis, Fred Baker, Asaf Sirkis
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).
Theo Travis
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.
John Etheridge
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.
Fred Baker
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.
Asaf Sirkis
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
Soft Machine return with a new line-up, and their thirteenth studio album, sixty years since the band was formed.
The number thirteen is unlucky for some, but the latest version of Soft Machine obviously don’t think so. In some cultures, the number is considered a symbol of change, regeneration or growth. Thirteen is the title of the band’s thirteenth album. The record has thirteen tracks, the longest of which is thirteen minutes. The band was co-founded by Daevid Allen, who was born on 13 January and died on 13 March. And the record is due out on Friday 13 March (what could be luckier than that?)
The album marks another chapter in Soft Machine’s complicated history over the last six decades. The band was formed in 1966 by Mike Ratledge, Robert Wyatt, Kevin Ayers and Daevid Allen. They were founder members of the Canterbury Scene, starting as a psychedelic band, and maintaining a regular residency at the UFO Club in London alongside the Syd Barrett-era Pink Floyd. Later, they became a progressive rock and jazz rock band. None of the founder members is still in the band; over the decades, the band has had over 30 members. The latest iteration of the band was formed in 2025, with John Etheridge on guitar (celebrating his 50th anniversary with the band!), long-standing member Theo Travis on sax, flute and keyboards, and new members Fred Thelonious Baker (bass) and Asaf Sirkis (drums).
Soft Machine luminary Robert Wyatt has endorsed Sirkis,
‘As far as I can see there’s nothing he can’t do when he puts his mind to it.. his kit skills just keep expanding but what really get to me are his ethereal, haunting compositions.’
Sirkis returns the compliment with Waltz for Robert, a haunting track that starts with gentle guitar chords and film noir flute that has the feel of Don’t Hate Me by Steven Wilson on which Theo Travis also plays. Travis’ flute playing becomes more florid, even as the guitar chords remain melancholy. Fred Thelonious Baker provides lovely fretless bass.
Sirkis also wrote the superb opening track Lemon Poem Song, with an atmospheric, gently aspirational chord sequence overlaid by John Etheridge’s filigree guitar work. Sirkis also shows what a stunningly virtuosic drummer he is, a worthy addition to the band.
The new version of the band has one song credited to all the band members, Pens to the Foal Mode, which was recorded live in the studio as a completely free group improvisation with no overdubs: all flute loops were recorded in real time. It’s a spacey track, with some dystopian guitar from John Etheridge. Seven Hoursalso starts with some free improvisation: this all bodes well for the band’s forthcoming tour which begins on 12 March.
Baker’s first composition for the band is Turmoilwhich begins with dense guitar, and a King Crimson sense of impending doom, with unsettling fuzz bass from Baker and an angular melody from Travis on sax. The track barely holds itself together, but virtuosic drumming from Sirkis just about keeps this superb song from falling part: a nightmarishly delicious vision that perfectly matches its title.
The bulk of the composing duties fall to Travis, who contributes nearly half of the tracks. He describes Open Roadas a ‘rocky track’ which fits his philosophy that melody is important. Like Lemon Poem Song, this track features an emotive chord sequence that underpins Travis’ long-limbed earworm of a melody. The sax solo is reminiscent of the work of the great Dick Parry, most famous for his work with Pink Floyd. Etheridge’s guitar solo has something of the feel of David Gilmour but with added intricacy. Fans of progressive rock will be pleased to note that the Mellotron is not just any Mellotron; this is Steven Wilson’s Mellotron. As Travis recounted to Sid Smith in Prog, Wilson let him use his Mellotron in return for Travis guesting at Wilson’s 2025 show at the Palladium.
The centrepiece of the album is Travis’ composition The Longest Night, which Smith describes in his sleeve notes as ‘prog-leaning’, perhaps because of its 13-minute length. This is an epic in King Crimson mode, which casts back to long-form, contemplative instrumentals from albums like Lark’s Tongue in Aspic (1973) and Starless and Bible Black (1974). There’s a lovely moment late in the track which is reminiscent of Ian Anderson’s flute playing, with a King Crimson bass line creeping up underneath. But this isn’t prog rock pastiche. Pete Whittaker provides some excellent work on organ, and Sirkis’ drumming is simply stunning. Travis provides pleasingly melodic sax lines. Etheridge played his extended solo live in the studio, worried afterwards that it was too long. Travis told Smith,
‘I don’t think [Etheridge] would mind me saying that he regards this as his best solo moment, and he’s made a lot of records over the years.’
The album ends with Daevid’s Special Cuppa, another tribute to a founder member of Soft Machine. Travis worked with Daevid Allen, who last played with the band in 1967, as a member of Gong from 1999 to 2009, and in 2001 he recorded Allen playing ‘glissando guitar’ in the studio. Travis has written a gorgeous song around Allen’s shimmering guitar, featuring the evocative sound of the duduk, an Armenian traditional instrument which he played on Aeolus: one hour duduk meditation, another collaboration with Wilson. The track ends with Allen’s ghostly guitar rising into the ether, coming full circle 60 years later.
Performers
John Etheridge Electric guitar Theo Travis Tenor and soprano saxes, flute, alto flute, Fender Rhodes piano, electronics, piano (track 1), Mellotron, Electronics Fred Thelonious Baker Fretless bass guitar Asaf Sirkis Drums and percussion, piano (track 6)
Daevid Allen (recorded in 2001) glissando guitar (track 13) Pete Whittaker Organ (tracks 2,5), Fender Rhodes piano (track 2) Nick Utteridge Gong (track 5)
Tracks 1 Lemon Poem Song (Sirkis) (3.27) 2 Open Road (Travis) (7.30) 3 Seven Hours (Travis) (5.12) 4 Waltz for Robert (Travis) (4.19) 5 The Longest Night (Travis) (13.08) 6 Disappear (Sirkis) (3.55) 7 Green Books (Etheridge) (5.46) 8 Beledo Balado (Etheridge) (4.32) 9 Pens To The Foal Mode (Baker, Etheridge, Sirkis, Travis) (2.42) 10 Time Station (Travis) (2.46) 11 Which Bridge Did You Cross (Travis) (2.49) 12 Turmoil (Baker) (5.30) 13 Daevid’s Special Cuppa (Travis) (3.10)
Thirteen is released on Dyad Records through Proper on Friday 13 March. Soft Machine’s 32-date tour begins in Coventry on Thursday 12 March.
Read on…
Theo Travis plays on Steven Wilson’s Overview Tour…
This is an analysis of the second half, and title track, of Steven Wilson’s eighth solo album, The Overview. For an introduction to the album, click here. For an analysis of the first half of the album, ‘Objects Outlive Us’, click here.
Perspective begins with radio transmissions from deep space. They sound like the radio transmissions at the opening of another space rock song, ‘Astronomy Domine’ from Pink Floyd’s 1967 album The Piper at the Gates of Dawn. In March 2024, Wilson said in a YouTube interview with Rick Beato that one of his favourite albums, by Pink Floyd – ‘still my favourite band’ – is Ummagumma (1969), which includes a live version of the song (although without the spoken words). When The Piper was released, Pink Floyd were managed by Andrew King and Peter Jenner. The latter read out the names of planets, stars and galaxies through a megaphone.
‘Perspective’ includes spoken word commentary from Wilson’s wife Rotem, just like the two previous albums, The Harmony Codex and The Future Bites. She names various cosmic phenomena, and their distances from Earth. Wilson used a website called scaleofuniverse.com to provide scientific facts. The distances involved are hard to comprehend – see below:
A megametre = 10^6 = ten to the power of six = ten with six zeroes = 1,000,000 m = a million m
A gigametre = 10^9 = ten to the power of nine = 10 with nine zeroes = 1,000,000,000 m = a billion m
Ganymede is the largest moon in the Solar System and Callisto is Jupiter’s second largest moon:
Size beyond one megametre Ten to the power of six Ganymede, Callisto
A still from The Overview Film by Miles Skarin
Rotem’s voice is tuned down in pitch. Wilson told The Rockonteurs podcast that he wanted her voice to sound dispassionate, and ‘emotionally flat… to recite these scientific facts.’ He had in mind HAL, the talking computer in the 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey, in the spacecraft Discovery One, who memorably says, ‘I’m sorry, Dave, I’m afraid I can’t do that.’
The red camera eye of HAL 9000 from Stanley Kubrick’s movie 2001: A Space Odyssey. Source; Wikimedia Commons
What intrigues Wilson is not just the scientific facts about the space phenomena that Rotem describes, but also the effect such facts have on human consciousness. In the BFI roundtable discussion to launch the album, he said that the sense of perspective shows who and what we are in relation to the vastness of the universe. He referred to Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series and the Total Perspective Vortex. This machine allows the user to take in the whole universe, by extrapolating ‘the whole of creation… from one small piece of fairy cake.’ Built to annoy his wife, when the inventor turned the machine on, she saw ‘in one instant the whole infinity of creation and herself in relation to it… to [the inventor’s horror] the shock completely annihilated her brain.’ Despite this, the inventor had proved to his satisfaction that ‘the one thing [we] cannot afford to have is a sense of proportion.’ The machine was later used as a punishment; the first person to survive it was the Betelgeusian, Zaphod Beeblebrox, who promptly ate the fairy cake.
The opening music is the most electronic on the album, following on from the more electronic sound of parts of The Future Bites and The Harmony Codex. Wilson told John Earls of NME that it’s something that the English electronic duo Autechre might have produced. Wilson isn’t the first musician to use electronic music on a prog rock album. Pink Floyd opened The Dark Side of the Moon with ‘On the Run’, which used the VCS3 analogue synthesiser to create the electronic sequence. Roger Waters can be seen manipulating the synth sounds, cigarette in hand, on Pink Floyd’s Live at Pompeii (1972; re-released in 2025 as Pink Floyd at Pompeii – MCMLXXII with new mixes by Wilson).
EMS Putney VCS 3 Synthesiser, of the Type Used by Pink Floyd on The Dark Side of the Moon. Source: Wikimedia Commons
The fiercely rhythmic, jerky synth tracks and electronic drums – all played and programmed by Wilson – contrast with Rotem’s deadpan delivery of scientific facts. At the same time, they create a futuristic soundscape that suggests that science is more dominant on the second side of the album. Wilson told Dave Everley of Prog that Objects Outlive Us is more of a ‘human’ story, whereas in Everley’s phrase, the title track ‘evokes the sparseness and coldness of space.’ At around 2:00, slower, more human-sounding chords begin to take over. We hear Wilson’s voice at around 2:30, albeit partly stripped of its humanity in a wordless vocalise, transposed up an octave, so that it sounds more like a synthesiser than a human voice.
A Beautiful Infinity I/ Borrowed Atoms/A Beautiful Infinity II
The protagonist is now on the other side of the universe, reflecting on his life back on Earth. He considers the time it takes light to travel long distances across space to reach the Earth; we see stars as they were hundreds or thousands of years ago. There’s a strong parallel with Christopher Nolan’s 2014 film Interstellar. The line ‘Each moment for me is a lifetime for you’ could apply to the film’s plot. It stars Matthew McConaughey as Joseph Cooper, a widowed former NASA test pilot who leaves a devastated Earth on a mission to find other habitable planets, leaving his young daughter Murph behind. Cooper and his crew travel remarkably close to a black hole called Gargantua. The scientific adviser to the film, Kip Thorne, wrote in his 2014 book The Science of Interstellar that time reaches a complete halt at the surface of a black hole.
When Cooper travels near Gargantua, he ages only a few hours while Murph, on Earth, ages eight decades. There’s a profoundly moving moment when he receives a transmission from his daughter, and he realises that he has missed 23 years of his daughter’s life. They are now the same age. When he left Earth, she was a child. Wilson encapsulates the emotion of this moment in the simple but deeply poetic line, ‘Back on Earth, my loving wife’s been dead for years.’ Although the title track concentrates on science, there is room for humanity, too. The protagonist’s distance from Earth puts everything in perspective: ‘what seemed important [is] now like dust inside the squall.’ There’s perhaps an echo of the dust storms in Interstellar, which make Earth uninhabitable.
‘A Beautiful Infinity I’ is the first time we hear Craig Blundell on drums. He plays in a more robust, rockier style than Russell Holzman on Objects Outlive Us; both drummers are superb. Wilson’s vocals are treated with a delay effect; the final part of each phrase is repeated, ‘from here… from here… from here.’ Pink Floyd used this effect on ‘Us and Them’ from The Dark Side of the Moon to add emotional depth. Wilson used the same effect on ‘Arriving Somewhere But Not Here’ on Deadwing (2005).
The slide guitar adds to the Floydian feeling of the track, but the guitar solo isn’t Gilmour-esque. Wilson asked Niko Tsonev to play the solo – his only solo on the album – in a style that combined the classic with the contemporary.’ The acoustic guitar, played by Wilson, is an Ovation in Nashville tuning. He used the same guitar and tuning on ‘Chimera’s Wreck’ from the 2022 Porcupine Tree album Closure/Continuation. He told Amit Sharma of Total Guitar that he used his Ovation guitar in Nashville tuning – the lowest four strings are tuned up an octave, creating ‘a very crystalline, musical box kind of tone.’
‘I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud’
The ‘Borrowed Atoms’ section begins at around 2:40 with a piano break. The delicate musical backdrop of piano and synthesiser accompanies one of the most poetic moments on the album, with the words ‘The clouds have no history’, and ends ten lines later with the words ‘Is this a dream?’ Wilson’s lyrics express profound complexity in simple language. He reverses the ‘pathetic fallacy’, a poetic device where human emotions or characteristics are attributed to nature. (A good example is I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud by William Wordsworth, which describes the daffodils as human dancers, ‘tossing their heads in sprightly dance.’) Wilson does the opposite, stressing that nature has no human emotion: ‘The clouds have no history/And the sea feels no sorrow.’ This is another aspect of the album’s perspective theme. Nature ignores us, so we shouldn’t take ourselves so seriously. Wilson says our atoms are just ‘borrowed’; when we die, they return to the universe. This is ambiguous – if our atoms are only ‘borrowed’, we are insignificant, but we should also take good care of our atoms, as we only have temporary stewardship. Wilson’s meditation on the nature of selfhood ends with a moving expression of existential angst, warmly sung, ‘Is this a dream?’
‘A Beautiful Infinity II’ begins at around 4:00 with the words ‘There’s no reason for any of this.’ Wilson’s personal view – with which some would disagree – is that the universe was created out of chaos, not by design or by a supreme being,
‘There’s no reason for any of this Just a beautiful infinity No design and no one at the wheel Just an existential mystery.’
The idea of no one being at the wheel is reminiscent of ‘The Creator has a Master Tape’ from the Porcupine Tree album In Absentia (2002). We discover that ‘the creator had a master tape’, which suggests design, only to find that – ironically – ‘he left it in a cab.’
After the massed backing vocals of Wilson and Randy McStine, there are some whimsical, almost scatting vocals from Wilson at around 4:05, in the same style as on ‘Harridan’, the opening track of Closure/Continuation. At around 5:00, McStine closes the track with a richly analogue Moog solo.
Infinity Measured In Moments
This section is the climax of side two. Rotem Wilson returns, reciting another list of space statistics to create a further sense of awe about the vastness of the universe. Blundell’s drumming here is impressive. He adds subtle shifts to the rhythmic patterns here, building the epic feel of the track and bringing a human feel to the electronic parts. The track is built around arpeggiating analogue synth patterns, just as Wilson built up the title track on The Harmony Codex. Wilson’s vocals are warm and rich, multitracked in unison rather than complex harmonies, as often in his Porcupine Tree songs. McStine provides backing vocals and a guitar solo at 2:15, which combines an angular, modern feel with the classic uplifting rock solo.
The Inner Sleeve of In Absentia by Lasse Hoile
It’s followed by handclaps (Wilson) and ukulele (McStine). Porcupine Tree fans may recall a similar effect on ‘Trains’ (In Absentia, 2002), a fan favourite with over 38 million plays on Spotify at the time of writing. There is some very Peter Hook-style bass in this section. Wilson is a massive fan of Hook’s former band Joy Division, listing the band’s debut single Transmission (1979), in his book Limited Edition of One as one of his top 100 tracks. At around 3:20, the track reaches a climax with Adam Holzman’s Moog solo, the first real opportunity Holzman has on the album to show the warmth and virtuosity of his jazz-tinged playing, which was a real highlight of The Overview Tour that came to London in May 2025.
Permanence
The final section of the album is a contemplative instrumental, beautiful, ambient and ethereal. We are now floating in space, billions of light-years away from Earth. The encounter with the alien on the moor at the beginning of the album now seems an infinite time ago.
Theo Travis. Photo by Mariia Korneeva
Theo Travis plays the soprano sax solo. Travis worked on some of Wilson’s solo albums, and the two worked together on Travis’ 2024 solo album Aeolus. That album is a one-hour Theo Travis piece for duduk; the instrument Travis played on ‘Beautiful Scarecrow’ on The Harmony Codex. Wilson produced the recordings and created soundscapes from Travis’s alto flute playing. That album is gentle, meditative, introspective and quietly mesmerising. Travis’s playing has the same effect on ‘Permanence.’
The section begins with the evocative sound of the electric piano, processed through a reverse echo. Two new instruments are added. The first is the celeste or celesta, a keyboard instrument that looks like a small upright piano. Like a piano, a hammer is operated by pressing a key, but instead of striking strings, the hammer hits a metal plate like that of a glockenspiel. Appropriately, in the context of this track, the name means ‘celestial’ or ‘heavenly.’ The second instrument is the Moog synthesiser on which Wilson created a sound like the theremin.
In the film by Miles Skarin, we move gradually closer to a green shoot of life. An out-of-focus creature gradually comes into focus. Our old friend, the alien from Objects Outlive Us, intently investigates the green shoot. We hadn’t forgotten that the alien exists. There is hope after all.
This post was updated at 18.02 on 29 December 2025 to correct the explanation of the terms megametre and gigametre, which had incorrectly referred to kilometres (km) rather than metres (m)
Beato, Rick, Steven Wilson Discusses His Favorite [Sic] Albums (Rick Beato 2, YouTube 24/03/34) Kemp, Gary and Pratt, Guy, Gary Kemp album special with Steven Wilson (The Rockonteurs, YouTube 26/01/25) Adams, Douglas, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Omnibus Edition, Boekerij 2018) Earls, John, Steven Wilson: “I’ve tried to reinvent the classic rock guitar solo” (NME 18/02/25) Everley, Dave, Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space (Prog, April 2025) Images from The Overview film by Miles Skarin of Crystal Spotlight Beato, Rick, Steven Wilson Discusses His Favorite [Sic] Albums (Rick Beato 2, YouTube 24/03/34) Kemp, Gary and Pratt, Guy, Gary Kemp album special with Steven Wilson (The Rockonteurs, YouTube 26/01/25) Adams, Douglas, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Omnibus Edition, Boekerij 2018) Earls, John, Steven Wilson: “I’ve tried to reinvent the classic rock guitar solo” (NME 18/02/25) Everley, Dave, Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space (Prog, April 2025) Sharma, Amit, Steven Wilson on Porcupine Tree’s triumphant return and his love of “guitar players that can play one note and break your heart” (Total Guitar, August 2022) Wilson, Steven, Limited Edition of One (Constable, April 2022)
An excitingly eclectic mix of prog bands perform to raise funds for an environmental charity
On a wet Sunday afternoon in early December, intrepid prog rock fans and supporters travelled from South London to North London… and also from Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, Belgium – and Manchester (your correspondent). This was a full day’s music festival without mud and dodgy toilets. There was a well-stocked bar, a small stage with an excellent sound and enough seats for those who didn’t fancy standing through sets by no fewer than seven bands and solo artists.
The event was jointly hosted by Malcolm Galloway of prog favourites Hats Off Gentlemen It’s Adequate, who was the MC for the festival, and Chris Parkins of London Prog Gigs. Mark Gatland, the bass player in Hats Off, stage managed and helped organise the event. All performers gave their services for free to support the rainforest and wildlife conservation charity, World Land Trust, which ‘protects the world’s most biologically significant and threatened habitats.’ This was the sixth year of Prog the Forest and the most successful to date, raising £2750 to protect nearly 26 acres of rainforest and other threatened habitats.
“We’ve just sent £2570 to the World Land Trust from Prog The Forest 2024, enough to protect almost 26 acres of rainforest and other threatened habitats, in co-operation with local communities. That takes our cumulative PTF total to over 89 acres.“
Malcolm Galloway, on behalf of Prog the Forest
Malcolm Galloway entertained the audience in between acts with acre-related facts and fun quizzes. We learned that oxen need two shoes per hoof as, unlike horses (but similar to the Devil), they have cloven hooves. Before the invention of the yoke, the blood supply to a horse’s head was cut off with unfortunate consequences. As one band member quipped, ‘You wouldn’t get this at a Taylor Swift gig.’ Well, quite.
The first band was Spriggan Mist, a ‘pagan progressive rock band.’ In real life, lead singer Fay Brotherhood is a ‘professional ecologist and bat worker’, and she was on message with her splendid forest-related headgear, which featured forest greenery, antlers and flashing lights. An antler-related incident occurred when Brotherhood hit the mic with her headgear, causing a howl of feedback. The rest of the band are Baz Cilia on bass and vocals, Maxine Cilia on guitar, saxophone, woodwind and vocals, Neil Wighton on guitar and Ali Soueidan on drums.
Introducing the song Kintbury Witch, Fay Brotherhood asked, “Any witches in the house?” “Me”, came the reply from a female voice at the back.
Opening song Isambard was uplifting heavy rock, with Floydian guitar solos of epic length. The Portal was written the day the immortal David Bowie died, an upbeat pop song with a nice melodic bass line, lute-like guitar and fierce drumming. Coloured lights on Brotherhood’s gloves lit up in appreciation of the music. Brighid was more downbeat, Brotherhood – with her vibrato vocals, exciting headgear and compelling stage presence -reminding some audience members of the great Lili-Marlene Premilovich, better known as Lene Lovich.
Multi-instrumentalist Maxine Cilia also reminded us of the late ’70s/early ’80s by introducing a Keytar (pedants will note that the name wasn’t used until 2012) on When Stars Collide; she also played the saxophone later in the song. The next song, Ianatores Teresteres, began with a fuzz-guitar riff reminiscent of the 1973 single Radar Love by Golden Earring. Maxine Cilia further demonstrated her versatility by playing a heavily-echoed recorder. The band ended an exhilarating and highly theatrical set with Kintbury Witch, Brotherhood dancing enthusiastically with animal skulls, which she held in either hand to illustrate a witches’ ceremony.
Singer-songwriter Leoni Jane Kennedy was hand-picked by members of Queen for the Freddie Mercury Scholarship. She has supported Rush tribute band Moving Pictures with acoustic covers of Rush songs. She started her set with a cover of ‘Kid Gloves’ from Grace Under Pressure (1984), singing in a lovely low, sultry voice and accompanying herself with virtuoso strumming and versatile picking on her acoustic guitar. She played a gorgeous, melancholy cover of ‘Tears’ from Rush’s 1976 album 2112. She also covered ‘New World Man’ from Signals (1982), judiciously changing its name to ‘New World Woman’, the title of her 2023 album.
Leoni Jane Kennedy asked the audience if anyone had heard of Rush’s 1976 album 2112. When she got an enthusiastic response she said, “I’m in the right room!”
Kennedy also writes her own songs. On Temple, she demonstrated the full range of her voice, with lovely legato singing, and nice guitar harmonics at the end. She held the audience spellbound with Life Like This, which had interesting chord changes and a nice harmonic structure. Her best song was Ammunition, written as part of her Master’s in Songwriting. Although written to a brief, this was a beautiful, poignant song about her relationship with her father, ‘You weren’t there to watch me grow.’ With her soulful voice, superb guitar playing, and charismatic stage presence, Kennedy deserves to go far.
MC Galloway teased us by introducing a group of five Russian composers, Mily Balakirev, César Cui, Modest Mussorgsky, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and Alexander Borodin, sometimes known as ‘The Mighty Handful’ or the (partially famous) Five who apparently ‘changed the perception of time in their music’. This concept would appeal to prog fans, who love a complex time signature.
MC Galloway announced The Mighty Handful as including a ‘former music director of Strictly‘. We were now firmly into prog territory, with time signatures on songs like Vital Signs and Exit Piece that even the best Strictly dancers would have struggled to illustrate through the medium of interpretive dance. Ralph Blackbourn on keyboards made a stunning impression of Rick Wakeman in several songs, although sadly without the cape (the Uncaped Crusader?) And on Cavalier Spirit, he channelled the cavalier spirit of the great Jon Lord (Deep Purple) on bluesy Hammond organ.
“We’re here for the trees”, announced Matt Howes of The Mighty Handful. Faster than lightning in a rainforest, the response came back from the audience, “The trees can’t be here!”
Matt Howes was a mesmerising frontman, singing in a rock style on Cavalier Spirit and in a stratospheric falsetto on a new song, All the Birds, which he quipped wouldn’t be released until 2026 to avoid putting pressure on themselves. Guitarist Christopher James Harrison brought some fine playing to the driving guitar rock of Hypothetically Speaking from the band’s epic concept album Still Sitting in Danny’s Car, which Howes described as ‘going on and on’. Bass player Tom Halley, a member of a barbershop quartet in another life, brought funky bass lines and then beautifully cascading lines to Distant as the Stars. Howe introduced The Signal (ii) as a difficult song that ‘might go wrong’. The song was, in fact, superbly executed, with a proggy start, a funky keyboard solo from Blackbourn, and a spacey section with complex polyrhythms. At the end of the piece, Blackbourn leapt with joy, and the audience shared in the sheer exuberance of the band’s performance.
According to their Facebook page, Mountainscape play, ‘Instrumental post-metal. We blend elements of post-rock, black metal, doom, sludge and ambient in a filmscore inspired way.’ For those in the audience who were post-metal curious, Chris Parkins of London Prog Gigs announced the three-piece as ‘prog adjacent or modern prog’ and said that they had been written up in Prog magazine; as Parkins said, if Jerry Ewing, Prog’s Editor, said they are prog they must be. Talking to band members later, they admitted playing a ‘softer’ set than their usual metal offering. Perhaps, in honour of the occasion, the band should have changed their name from Mountainscape to Treescape (although apparently some mountains do have rainforests growing on them).
Mountainscape consists of Dan Scrivener on guitar, Ethan Bishop on bass, and James Scrivener on drums, but the band’s sound was so full that they often sounded like a much bigger band. Atoms Unfurling began with ambient, spacey sounds and military drumming, then soaring, anthemic guitar. There was some black metal riffing at the end, but not enough to frighten the horses of prog – there were strong melodies that belied the band’s description of their music as ‘sludge’. On Iridescent, they lived up to their description. They created a compelling soundtrack for an imaginary film or video game, with a soaring, legato guitar solo with a few nicely proggy corners. Supernova featured some thrillingly evocative key changes, and Belonging began with a halo of tranquil electronics followed by deep, visceral bass and uplifting black metal riffs. The band’s exhilarating and prog-friendly set ended with the low-slung groove of Patterns in the Mist.
During the interval (or should that be a Winterval?), the audience went off to forage in the forest for food… or perhaps to comb the streets of Camden, while there were sound checks for the festival’s second half.
Theo Travis is a member of Soft Machine and has played saxophone and flute with numerous jazz and prog bands; the list of musicians he has collaborated with reads like a who’s who of jazz and prog. He also played duduk – a wind instrument with a large double reed, originally from Armenia – on‘ Beautiful Scarecrow’ on Steven Wilson’s last solo album, The Harmony Codex. His latest solo album is the beguiling Aeolus: One Hour Duduk Meditation, with ‘Production and Soundscapes’ by Steven Wilson. Last Sunday, he treated us to a short set for solo flute, made up of five evocative pieces. He used a loop pedal extensively to create harmonies and multi-layered trance-like themes. He also used flutter tonguing above stately melodies, sounding like a delicate butterfly or a bird’s wings fluttering. Sometimes, the effect was deliciously unsettling; elsewhere, the melodies sounded medieval and ineffably sad. He also created mesmerisingly deep organ notes. In the final piece, he played a stately riff, with complex flourishes above, building multiple parts that at one point sounded like one of Bach’s two-part inventions. A spellbinding set.
At the start of his set, Tim Bowness invited us to visualise dry ice and the epic strains of German composer Richard Strauss’ Also Sprach Zarathustra (the ‘theme music’ for Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey)
Then it was the turn of Prog Royalty to grace the stage – Tim Bowness was one-half of no-man with Steven Wilson (or originally one-third of the band that also consisted of violinist Ben Coleman, who played violin on The Harmony Codex). He introduced his band Butterfly Mind, saying they first played together in a five-minute soundcheck during the interval. The band consisted of Andrew Booker (drums), who had joined at very short notice, Rob Groucutt (keyboards), John Jowitt (bass) and Matt Stevens (guitar). Theo Travis, ‘dressed for the occasion’ in an elegant smoking jacket (if that’s the correct term; this Blog shouldn’t be relied on for fashion tips), played on some songs.
The band began with a blistering version of ‘Time Travel in Texas’ from no-man’s 1996 album Wild Opera, with a scorchingly funky bass line and an amazingly virtuosic guitar solo. Bowness was in fine voice here and throughout the set. The band were incredibly tight, despite their lack of time together. Next was ‘All the Blue Changes’ from no-man’s Together We’re Stranger (2003), which began with delicate piano and guitar and morphed into a punk/indie rock anthem. There was a change of pace for ‘Wherever There is Light’ from 2008’s classic no-man album Schoolyard Ghosts – which also contains the classic Pigeon Drummer – the band’s last album before 2019’s Love You to Bits. Bowness’ voice was a soft-grained wonder on this track. Theo Travis on flute provided a simple melodic theme that was very different from his solo set, with a gorgeous tone; the second time round, he decorated the song with delicate, filigree ornaments. Another early highlight was ‘Sing to Me’ from Tim Bowness’s third solo album, Stupid Things That Mean the World (2015). Bowness’ voice was pure, sweet and thoughtful. The band brought warm backing vocals, loose-limbed and relaxed drumming, gorgeous piano and bass flourishes, a lovely echoey guitar solo, and a heart-stopping key change after the words ‘the way she looked at you.’
‘Rainmark’ from Bowness’ fifth solo album, Flowers At The Scene (2019), included the lyrics, ‘I would save you/From the coming flood’, giving him the chance to meditate wittily on the floods that had come to his adopted home of Bradford on Avon, which apparently were so bad that from his house on the hill, the Co-op could only be reached ‘by dinghy’. and there was ‘no Ocado for three days!’ More remarkable than these First World Problems was the final acapella section of the song, with stunning drumming from Booker, effectively a drum solo with amazingly complex rhythms. The band were joined again by the ‘elegantly attired’ Travis for a stunning version of no-man’s 1993 single Sweetheart Raw. He played warm, low saxophone, then let rip with a fluid but angular jazz solo, playing an extraordinary number of notes in a very short time. Travis played soulful flute on ‘Mixtaped’ from Schoolyard Ghosts, then fiercely passionate sax. The song ended with Bowness’ beautiful solo voice. Travis rounded off ‘Things Change’ from no-man’s Flowermouth (1994) with a jazzy flourish while Stevens held his guitar aloft in triumph.
To close the festival, MC Galloway was joined onstage by Mark Gatland from Hats Off Gentlemen It’s Adequate. The band began with a world-exclusive premiere of ‘Certainty’ from their new album, The Uncertainty Principle. The song was a showpiece for Galloway’s superb guitar playing, ranging from a lyrical Floydian solo to jazzy, offbeat playing and an epic, bluesy solo. The band were joined by Galloway’s wife, the flautist Kathryn Thomas, on Century Rain. Having already heard Theo Travis on flute, all we needed was Jethro Tull’s Ian Anderson to complete the prog flute trio, but perhaps he was busy recording voiceovers and flute for the next Opeth album. Unlike Anderson, Thomas played while standing on both legs, but more importantly, her solo was wonderfully florid, matched by Galloway’s equally ornate solo, while Gatland provided viscerally robust bass.
Gatland introduced ‘Walking to Aldebaran’ from Hats Off’s last album, The Light of Ancient Mistakes, as ‘the hardest, slightly maddest’ song of the set, combining as it does prog metal and Andrew Lloyd Webber, all in nine minutes! The song began with fierce prog metal riffing, then Hendrix-style guitar. Galloway sang with Bowie-like passion. Another fearsome prog-metal section led to a melodic passage that could have come from a West End musical. The song ended with melancholy piano and a haunting guitar solo, giving it a dystopian feel like many of the band’s songs.
The highlight of the set was another song from the new album, ‘Between Two Worlds’, about somebody waiting for the result of a scan. Galloway explained that this puts the patient metaphorically in the position of Schrödinger’s cat, simultaneously well and not well, while awaiting a diagnosis. Galloway explained that on the new album, the song will be a piano ballad, but as he can’t carry a keyboard to gigs he played a guitar version instead. The result was a moving, contemplative ballad, Galloway singing with compassionate empathy while Gatland and the audience listened respectfully. As Gatland quipped, it was ‘the feel-good hit of the summer.’
In common with much of the finest prog rock, the band’s subject matter is frequently depressing, but there was also joy and passion in their playing. In the final song, My Clockwork Heart, they were joined onstage by Chris Parkins, who smiled and nodded along and then joined in the chorus. This brief moment of joy summed up the spirit of the whole festival. There was genuine camaraderie – other musicians stayed and watched the other bands, and some performers from previous years came to watch, too. Many of the musicians chatted with the audience members after their sets; at times, it felt like an amiable networking event for prog rockers and their fans… Bring on Prog the Forest 2025!
Update at 14.04 on Sunday 15 December 2024: The next Prog the Forest one day festival will take place on Saturday 6 December 2025.
