Jazz Articles about Mike Ratledge

About Mike Ratledge

Album Review

Soft Machine: Floating World Live

Read "Floating World Live" reviewed by Glenn Astarita

by Glenn Astarita
September 18, 2025

Keyboardist Mike Ratledge's “The Man Who Waved at Trains" emerges as a highlight from Soft Machine's 2025 remastered album Floating World Live, representing a crucial period in the Canterbury legends' evolution during their pivotal era with guitar great Allan Holdsworth . Moreover, Drop (MoonJune, 2025), drawn from a 1971 concert, also receives the remastered treatment for 2025. “The Man Who Waved at Trains" highlights Soft Machine at their most reflective, weaving together Ratledge and Karl Jenkins' hypnotic keyboard ...

Album Review

Soft Machine: The Dutch Lesson

Read "The Dutch Lesson" reviewed by Mark Sullivan

by Mark Sullivan
August 26, 2023

Soft Machine had played in Rotterdam several times before this 1973 show in the small theater De Lantaren. But this version of the band was relatively new. One of the earliest shows by the quartet of electric bassist Roy Babbington, Karl Jenkins (on multiple horns and electric piano), keyboardist Mike Ratledge and drummer John Marshall was documented on NDR Jazz Workshop--Hamburg, Germany, May 17, 1973 (Cuneiform Records, 2010). By late October the band had become a potent live force. They ...

Album Review

Soft Machine: Facelift France and Holland

Read "Facelift France and Holland" reviewed by Maurizio Comandini

by Maurizio Comandini
May 30, 2022

Sotto l'ombrello robusto chiamato Soft Machine si nascondono in realtà parecchie band. All'inizio l'interesse del gruppo, nato nel 1966 in quel di Canterbury (anche se loro non vogliono essere considerati come esponenti del cosiddetto Canterbury Sound), era per una sorta di pop-rock patafisico, che poi ha iniziato a dilatarsi verso la psichedelia, il rock progressivo, il jazz moderno, la musica creativa, l'avanguardia. Questa eccellente proposta della Cuneiform, etichetta che davvero merita un plauso particolare per l'abilità dimostrata nel riuscire a ...

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Album Review

Soft Machine: Floating World Live

Read "Floating World Live" reviewed by John Kelman

by John Kelman
March 16, 2006

Fans of Soft Machine, which began with mid-1960s psychedelia but evolved into Britain's most influential jazz/rock group, generally consider the “classic lineup to be keyboardist Mike Ratledge, bassist Hugh Hopper, drummer Robert Wyatt and the recently deceased saxophonist Elton Dean. Many also suggest that ex-Nucleus woodwind multi-instrumentalist/keyboardist Karl Jenkins' recruitment signalled the beginning of the end, as the Softs moved from greater freedom towards riff-heavy fusion. But it's a more complicated story than that. The fact is that many post-Dean ...