Britain in the 60s was a musical cauldron where what would eventually be called “psychedelia” was brewing. One of the most influential of the cultural forces responsible for the rise of psychedelia in Britain was the Canterbury scene. A collective of musicians based in the Kentish tourist town that is home to the Church of England’s Archbishop, the Canterbury Scene provided the cradle for a half-dozen of the most freewheeling British bands of the early psychedelic through the post-psychedelic eras. Though the literal musical similarities between Canterbury’s major bands—the Soft Machine, Caravan, Gong, Hatfield & the North, Egg, National Health—are few, their distinct fusion of concept-heavy jazz improvisation and rock rhythms united them.

Many of the Canterbury scene’s prominent figures began their musical careers in a beat group called the Wilde Flowers. Together from 1963 to 1969, the Wilde Flowers included most of the figures who later formed Canterbury’s two most renowned bands, the Soft Machine (Robert Wyatt, Kevin Ayers) and Caravan (Pye Hastings, David Sinclair, Richard Sinclair, Richard Coughlan). Of the Canterbury bands, Soft Machine is probably the best introduction to the Canterbury sound for the uninitiated.

Formed in 1966 and named after the eponymous Burroughs novel, Soft Machine soon made the move to swinging London. In January 1967, the band’s one and only single was recorded, but by this time, they had already become something of a cult band on the London psychedelic scene, gigging at places like the Roundhouse and the UFO. In 1967, they took part in an event set up by the underground paper International Times, which also featured the Pink Floyd, who would later eclipse them in the public eye and receive most of the mainstream credit for the rise of the psychedelic sound. In February 1968, Soft Machine embarked on a 3-month US tour (opening for the Jimi Hendrix Experience), during which they would cut their their first album in New York, with production handled by Tom Wilson and former Animals bassist and Hendrix’s producer, Chas Chandler.

Recorded in just a few days in New York while Soft Machine was touring America, Volume One, the fruit of their efforts with Wilson and Chandler, is a clear reflection of the band’s live sets at the time—a collection of psych-flavored pop songs linked together by instrumental, sometimes improvised, interludes. Opening track “Hope for Happiness” echoes the rising tide of optimism that swept youth culture in the 60s. The interplay between Ratledge’s organ and Wyatt’s drums on tracks like “So Boot if At All” is of a speed and intensity rarely achieved in Soft Machine’s later, more jazz-oriented efforts. Kevin Ayers’ aesthetic contributions are concentrated on the second side, the highlights of which are the absurdly repetitive “We Did It Again.”

By the early ‘70s, a series of fragmenting lineup changes and the subsequent formation of new bands soon multiplied the force of the Canterbury scene. Early Soft Machine member Daevid Allen formed Gong, and both Kevin Ayers and Robert Wyatt eventually left the Softs to begin their own solo careers. By the mid-’70s, many of the remaining Canterbury bands had progressed from psychedelic and prog-rock to embrace extended fusion jams with few lyrics.

The rest is prog-rock history.

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