What is the Canterbury scene (or Canterbury Sound)? Part One

The Canterbury scene or Sound is a subgenre of progressive rock without a clear definition created in the late 1960s and early 1970s by musicians who used improvisation, some of whom lived in Canterbury (England). These players alternated in numerous bands that were constantly changing formation and had a similar style, characterized by hints of psychedelia, abstract lyrics, complex meters and jazz solos. Many of these musicians were introduced later to avant-garde or jazz fusion. Among the groups that were formed were Soft Machine, Caravan, Delivery, Gong, National Health, Hatfield And The North, In Cahoots, Gilgamesh, The Keith Tippett Group, Centipede, Soft Head, Soft Heap, Quite Sun, Egg, Khan, Matching Mole and others.

It all started in 1963, when guitarist Daevid Allen, singer and drummer Robert Wyatt and electric bassist Hugh Hopper formed the Daevid Allen Trio, which in 1964 would be transformed into the Wild Flowers quintet, the seed from which emerged the members who later founded Soft Machine and Caravan, from which in turn the musicians who formed several later bands came out. In 1966, Allen, Wyatt, keyboardist Mike Ratledge, who had occasionally played with the Daevid Allen Trio, and singer and electric bassist Kevin Ayers from Wild Flowers, founded Soft Machine. Then singer and guitarist Pye Hastings took over Wild Flowers until 1968 when it became Caravan with Hastings himself, Dave Sinclair on keyboards, Richard Sinclair on electric bass and Richard Coughlan on drums playing a mix of psychedelic rock, jazz and classical music.

In 1971 they released their most significant album, In the Land of Gray and Pink with Decca Records, starring Dave Sinclair’s solos, with a 22-minute suite on side two. They were successful in the United Kingdom and then became popular in Germany, the Netherlands and France during the 1970s. In the 1980s the group stopped performing, but in the 1990s it reappeared led again by Hastings and touring his country, Europe and the United States until well into the 2000s. It can be said that if Soft Machine was the head of the Canterbury scene with its transition from psychedelic rock to jazz experimentation, Caravan was the heart.