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Soft Machine had emerged out of an earlier band called Wildeflowers (a reference to Oscar Wilde). The Wildeflowers line-up included, at various times: Brian Hopper (guitar, saxophone, flute, vocals), Hugh Hopper (bass), Robert Wyatt (drums, vocals), Richard Sinclair (guitar, vocals), Kevin Ayers (vocals), Pye Hastings (guitar, vocals), Dave Sinclair (keyboards), Richard Sinclair (bass, vocals) and Richard Coughlan (drums). These latter four formed another successful Canterbury band Caravan.
When the band became Soft Machine, its initial lineup featured Kevin Ayers (bass), Robert Wyatt (drums, vocals), Daevid Allen (guitar) and Mike Ratledge (keyboards). Allen left before their first album, and Ayers was replaced by Hugh Hopper by the time of the second. Allen later formed Gong.
The best-known lineup, containing Wyatt, Ratledge, Hopper, and saxophonist Elton Dean , produced the critically-acclaimed album Third and its follow-up Fourth. At that time Soft Machine was playing a form of fusion jazz influenced by Miles DavisMiles Davis ( May 26, 1926 September 28, 1991) was an American jazz composer, trumpeter and multi-instrumentalist and was one of the most influential, innovative and original musicians of the twentieth century. In terms of importance to the history of jaz and similar to the early work of Weather ReportWeather Report was a seminal jazz fusion band of the 1970s and 1980s. The band was originally a spin-off from the group of musicians centered around Miles Davis in the late sixties and early seventies. The stable core of the group was the duo of pianist J. Wyatt, disagreeing with a direction that left no room for his vocal experiments, left the band in 1971 for a solo career. Later line-up changes left Ratledge the only original member of the band, and by 1976 he was gone too. Karl JenkinsKarl Jenkins (born 1944) is a Welsh musician and composer. Jenkins began his diverse musical career as an oboe player in the National Children's Orchestra. He went on to study music at University College, Cardiff, and at the Royal Academy of Music. He was (keyboards and woodwinds), who had joined in 1972, became the band's leader and led it until its disbanding in 1984; guitarist Allan HoldsworthAllan Holdsworth (born August 6, 1948) is a British guitarist and jazz composer. Holdsworth is felt by many to be one of the most significant figures in the development and evolution of the electric guitar in the modern era, and has been described as "the was a member during this period. (Today, Karl Jenkins is better known for classically oriented projects such as AdiemusAdiemus ( pronounced /adi:"em@s/) is the title of a series of albums by Welsh composer Karl Jenkins: Adiemus: Songs of Sanctuary ( 1994) Adiemus II: Cantata Mundi ( 1997) Adiemus III: Dances of Time ( 1999) Adiemus IV: The Eternal Knot ( 2001) Adiemus V:.)
Exterior link: Wildeflowers