ANDY WHITE
Soft Machine’s early albums helped the Tonstartssbandht vocalist and guitarist find himself… and his sound.
“At the beginning of my adolescence, my brother [Edwin, Tonstartssbandht’s drummer and co-vocalist] and I fell into a group of people in Orlando who were finding themselves at the same time as they were finding music. We soon realised we liked more experimental forms of rock’n’roll and pop and I first became familiar with the members of Soft Machine through their solo work.
“This guy called Calvin, who worked in a record store, would give me cool music when I was younger. He dug out the Robert Wyatt album The End Of An Ear, and was like, ‘This is an incredible record, you should get this’. I was probably 14 or 15 at the time.
“I loved that record, and I was really into Gong’s Angel’s Egg before I realised that Daevid Allen [had also been] in Soft Machine. I really dug Live Floating Anarchy 1977 too. Then I got a copy of Whatevershebringswesing by Kevin Ayers and, realising all these guys were in Soft Machine, I got a copy of Third – that was my first Soft
Machine album.
“It sounded way different from the solo work but I loved it because it was so heavy, and I just went backwards from there. The way the whole of Third sounds, it’s that style of recording that you just don’t hear anymore, it feels like you’re in the room with them.
The way the organ is mic’d just feels like you’re about eight feet away from the guys playing music. Facelift is one of my favourite tracks – the organ tone is crazy. I used to smoke a ton of weed and it’s such a nice heavy riff to play along with.
“I’m always drawn to Third because it’s the first one I heard, but in the last few years I’ve been listening to [debut] The Soft Machine the most. It’s more compositions with a bit of improv tying them together. I read a Robert Wyatt quote about why he wrote such long songs and he replied to the effect that if you don’t stop in-between songs, no one can boo you on stage. I can kind of relate to that!” NRS
“Facelift is one of my favourite tracks. It’s such a nice heavy riff to play along with.”