keyboardist Mike Ratledge, one of the founding members and main driving forces behind the groundbreaking band Soft Machine left us a couple of days back. We really couldn’t let it pass without a little bit of celebration of a music life more than well lived…

Here’s a rather good piece posted by Cat Synth with a contribution from Steve Feigenbaum

“We pay tribute to composer and keyboardist Mike Ratledge, one of the founding members of the band Soft Machine, who passed away on February 5, 2025. Along with his bandmates, he brought Soft Machine from the psychedelic UK underground scene of the 1960s into a seminal band in the genres that would become jazz fusion and progressive rock. They had a string of very influential albums, Third through Seven, between 1970 and 1973. After leaving Soft Machine, Ratledge continued to be involved in music as a composer for commercials, theater and film. Our tribute includes an appreciation from Steve Feigenbaum, label head of Cuneiform Records. We appreciate his participation and support”.

And here’s a piece written by Jose Zegarra Holder that he has kindly allowed us to share…

Mike Ratledge: The Reluctant Visionary of the Canterbury Underground – 06 May 1943 – 05 February 2025 – There was always something a little elusive about Mike Ratledge. You could hear it in the detached, almost nihilistic menace of that opening drone on Facelift, a sound that made my younger self question whether the record was even meant for human ears. You could see it in the classic Third album cover, Ratledge, sunglasses like twin black holes, expressionless, like he was already halfway out the door. He was the genius who never seemed to care if you knew it. And now he’s gone.

Ratledge, who passed away yesterday at 81, wasn’t just the last original member of Soft Machine by the mid-’70s, he was, in a sense, its architect. His influence stretched from their early psychedelic days, through the free-jazz chaos of Volume Two, and into the tightly wound, cerebral labyrinth of Third. The man took what could have been another forgettable post-psychedelic jam band and pushed it toward something angular, modernist, and deeply unsettling. Slightly All The Time and Out-Bloody-Rageous weren’t just tunes; they were blueprints for entire genres that hadn’t been invented yet.

But even as his Lowrey organ howled and skittered through the Soft Machine catalogue, Ratledge remained an enigma. While Robert Wyatt belted his wounded poet anthems and Elton Dean let loose with sax solos like a man on fire, Ratledge was pure intellect, a controlled detonation, never once betraying emotion. If his soloing style felt like an unstoppable torrent of notes, it wasn’t out of showmanship, but sheer necessity; technical limitations of the instrument forced his hand into a restless, continuous stream of sound. And so, by accident or genius, he created a signature style that bands would spend decades trying to emulate.

By the time Soft Machine had shifted into their slicker, fusion-heavy Bundles era, Ratledge had already mentally checked out. Maybe he saw the writing on the wall, or maybe he just got tired of being the last man standing in a group that had become a revolving door of jazz virtuosos. Either way, by the late ’70s, he was gone, off to score films, dabble in library music, and, in one of his stranger career turns, contribute programmed percussion to the massively successful Adiemus project.

Unlike Wyatt or Hopper, he didn’t indulge in nostalgia. He refused interviews, dismissed his past, and left Soft Machine to be dissected by historians and cultists while he moved on to other things. He wasn’t interested in being a legend. But here’s the thing: he already was.

Ratledge’s compositions and performances were never just part of the Canterbury scene, they were its backbone, its dark, unpredictable heart. He wasn’t the easiest musician to love, but he was impossible to ignore. And for those of us who sat in a darkened room, hearing the ominous rumble of Why Are We Sleeping? or the cosmic shimmer of Out-Bloody-Rageous for the first time, he gave us something that felt like a secret: a world to get lost in.

Mike Ratledge didn’t just shape the sound of Soft Machine. He shaped the way some of us hear music itself. (Jose Zegarra Holder)

Jose Zegarra Holder is a filmmaker based in Washington, D.C.,he the creator of the Romantic Warriors documentary series on Progressive Music. His work includes Canterbury Tales, a film that explores the Canterbury music scene of the 1970s. He can be contacted at www.progdocs.com

Explore the Cuneiform Records Bandcamp where Steve Feigenbaum keep Soft Machine things flowing…

And here’s a 1974 interview with some excellent live footage at the end…

And…

And beyond the humanity of the Soft Machine…

And here’s Tonight’s Other Rock Show broadcast with a bit of Soft Machine at the end…