Mike Ratledge

Mike Ratledge ( born May 6, 1943 in Maidstone, Kent, England ) is a keyboard player and composer.

Life and work

Ratledge was known as a musician of English art-rock band Soft Machine, which is considered an important representative of the Canterbury sound. His style was influenced by both modern jazz of the sixties ( Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman ) as well as of minimal music and Indian raga. He wrote much of the music on the first five albums.

His strong durcharrangierten pieces are characterized by a complex variety of forms, unusual for rock quart harmonies and odd time signatures. Exemplary are particularly extended instrumental pieces such as " Esther 's Nose Job", "Slightly All The Time ", " Out - Bloody - Rageous ", " Teeth", "Drop", "As If " and " Chloe And The Pirates ". Characteristic of his keyboard sounds in this phase is the absence of then modern synthesizer. Instead, the musicians preferred electronic sound distortions conventional electric pianos and organs that produce a very unique sound spectrum.

Ratledge left Soft Machine in 1976 and focused on advertising music. In 1993, he met his former Soft Machine colleagues Karl Jenkins Adiemus in the project.