All'attuale formazione dei Soft Machine - di molto successiva alle ventiquattro calcolate nel suo libro da Graham Bennett, fermo al luglio-agosto 1984 - dedica spazio con un'articolata sequenza di recensioni e interviste Phil Howitt presso Facelift-The Canterbury scene(zine) continued... Il gruppo, impegnatissimo a promuovere il recente album Thirteen, è atteso anche in Italia tra qualche giorno a Breno (Bs) e soprattutto il 24 luglio al mega-festival moonjunista organizzato a Teramo da Leonardo Pavkovic.
Scrive Howitt: "It was patently obvious on first hearing the new Soft Machine album Thirteen, back in the autumn of 2025, that this was something of a landmark release for the band. It’s the first entirely under the individual and collective compositional talents of the quartet of John Etheridge (guitar), Theo Travis (saxes, flute, keyboards), Fred Baker (bass) and Asaf Sirkis (drums), a high calibre, high energy quartet you will have hopefully seen under the Soft Machine banner in the last 3 or 4 years. Although interviews with all four members were carried out back in January for an article for May’s Record Collector, and further added to during the spring, what you’ll see on the Facelift blog over the next couple of weeks is a collation of thoughts about various topics such as the band’s thoughts about Thirteen; how each member joined the band; their prior exposure to Soft Machine music; what they think about the current project and in particular its remarkable rhythm section; and thoughts about a recent, memorable American tour."
