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Mike Ratledge, the keyboardist and a co-founder of English rock band Soft Machine, has died, the band’s guitarist John Etheridge confirmed. He was 81 years old.

“Incredibly sad news that my great friend and Soft Machine legend passed away two hours ago after a brief illness,” Etheridge wrote on Facebook. “Mike was the backbone of Soft Machine in the early years and a man with an absolutely incisive mind – a marvelous composer and keyboardist. A real renaissance man – so talented, cultured, charming – and wonderful companion. We used to meet every...

Decades ago, “when the Clash was falling apart” – as the band’s bassist Paul Simonon tells it – Joe Strummer wanted to return to his roots busking in public. So he and the band journeyed to the north of England to play in the streets. “We slept on a lot of people’s sofas, because we left our credit cards and money behind and lived on what we earned in the street,” Simonon remembers on a Zoom from his home in London. “We had enough to get to the next town and something to eat.

Brian Eno’s collaborative albums with John Cale and bassist Jah Wobble — 1990’s Wrong Way Up and 1995’s Spinner, respectively — will be reissued with a handful of bonus tracks each. The sets will arrive on August 21st via All Saints Records.

The reissues coincide with the 30th anniversary of Wrong Way Up and the 25th anniversary of Spinner. The bonus tracks on Wrong Way Up are “Grandfather’s House” and “Palanquin,” which appeared on the b-side of the “Spinning Away” single. And the bonus tracks on Spinner are “Stravinsky,” an...

Dreamers, like the worlds they inhabit, come and go, leaving a profoundly vague impression in their wake. Kevin Ayers was never a major star. His songs were simply too idiosyncratic to garner mass appeal, but like many for whom fame was largely an irritant of the creative process, he exerted a greater influence than he imagined or really cared for. 

Morrissey is now viewed as the quintessential English pop icon, but the soil he sprang from was gritty, working class, and Northern. The product of an inner city education system, his brand of Britishness is not as universal as it might appear to outsiders. There are many variations of the national characteristic, and Ayers had a colonial, distractedly comfortable middle-class one. sullied by his public school incarceration, and the memory of distant sunshine from a childhood spent abroad. A slightly surreal confection of Nick Drake, Noel Coward, and country house fop,...

Kevin Ayers, best known as a founding member of Soft Machine, has died. He was 68. No official cause of death has been announced. Ayers is widely regarded as one of the pioneers of psychedelic music, both for his work with Soft Machine and as a solo artist. Before Ayers left the group in 1968, Soft Machine played frequently with the Syd Barrett-era Pink Floyd, recorded a well-regarded self-titled album, and toured with The Jimi Hendrix Experience. After leaving Soft Machine, Ayers' career expanded even more wildly. He released over a dozen solo records between 1969 and 2007, including his ...

Nico's fourth studio album The End will be re-released on October 1. The remastered 2Cd set features previously-unreleased John Peel Sessions and Old Grey Whistle Test performances. Also included are two live tracks from the show at London's Rainbow Theatre on June 1, 1974, which marked the launch of albums from Nico, John Cale, Brian Eno and Kevin Ayers. Nico was brought to Island by A&R man Richard Williams after regular collaborator Cale signed a new contract with the label. The End was recorded at Sound Techniques in London, with John Wood in 1973 with accompaniment from Eno and Roxy Music's Phil Manzanera. The reissue coincides with the upcoming super deluxe boxset edition of The Velvet Underground & Nico, also available from October 1. The full tracklisting (more)...

Snubbed by Scotland's jazz scene, guitar virtuoso Bill Wells has teamed up with ex-Arab Strap man Aidan Moffat for a panoramic meditation on life and death

'I like to think I can do things over a very wide musical range," Bill Wells says. "Even if you're just a session player, you like to think you can be recognised in some way. But if I'm collaborating with someone, I try and find out what's the best thing to do to make the music work. I also enjoy taking control. I like to think there's enough identity there in my own music so that people will recognise it, but I also want to do different things. I like stuff that's very free and very melodic as well."

Wells is a jazz pianist – he's won jazz awards and led his own octet and trio. He's also a session guitarist and a key contributor to Scotland's indie scene.

Director: Shane Dax Taylor Writer: W. Earl Brown (screenplay), William Gay (novel: Provinces of Night) Starring: Val Kilmer, Kris Kristofferson, Hilary Duff, Reece Thompson, Dwight Yoakam, Frances Conroy, W. Earl Brown, Hilarie Burton, Sheila Kelley After a health scare, E.F. Bloodworth (Kris Kristofferson) is returning to the family he abandoned 40 years ago. He left his rural Tennessee home -- as well as his wife Julia (Frances Conroy) and three sons -- for a life of troubadouring and aimless wandering. The 40 years have been hard on everyone: Julia has withered to an emotionally and physically fragile skeleton; Warren (Val Kilmer) has evolved into an ego-maniacal womanizing alcoholic; Boyd (Dwight Yoakam) lives in a constant state of depression and anger after being ditched by his wife; and Brady (W. Earl Brown) relies on his bible and witchcraft to protect his mother. Julia and her three sons share a common hatred and resentment for E.