Hugh Hopper

Soft Machine's bassist Hugh Hopper debuted solo with 1984 (CBS, 1973), one of the most futuristic albums of the Canterbury school (fuzz bass, loops, overdub). The 14-minute Miniluv was entirely performed by Hopper on bass and assorted electronic devices. Dispensing with melody and rhythm, Hopper sculpted an eerie soundscape of free timbres. The 17-minute Miniplenty is also a free-form fresco but its emphasis is on the discontinuous sounds of percussion, and the electronic sounds are violent and distorted. The initial Don Cherry-ian atmosphere soon turns into an Edgar Varese-ian nightmare and ends in a dissonant mockery of jazz-rock. Sandwiched between the two lengthy pieces were two short jams with a more conventional free/bop ensemble, Minipax 1 (Lol Coxhill on soprano and Gary Windo on tenor, two trombones, guitar, drums and Hopper) and Minipax 2 (bass clarinet, two trombones, percussion and Hopper), but the music was hardly conventional at all, relying on nonchalant repetition of folkish themes and (the latter) studio manipulation.

After brief stints in Isotope and Gilgamesh, Hopper recorded his second solo album, and a collaboration with Dean, Tippett and Gallivan, Cruel But Fair (Compendium, 1976), Tunity Box (Compendium, 1977 - Cuneiform, 2007), which failed to recreate the magic of 1984 despite a line-up that included Elton Dean (sax), Mark Charig (cornet), Dave Stewart (keyboards) and Gary Windo (sax), and despite a few captivating themes (the grandiloquent Tunity Box, the exuberant Latin-tinged Miniluv the noir-jazzy The Lonely Sea and the Sky, the funky Crumble) and the aggressive eight-minute jazz-rock jam of Gnat Prong.

Hopper then joined Elton Dean's Soft Head and its subsequent mutations.

Two Rainbows Daily (Red, 1980), Hopper's collaboration with former Gilgamesh's keyboardist Alan Gowen, was several albums in one. Mellotron-driven pieces such as Seen Through a Door display a melodic pomp and a narrative dynamics that merged King Crimson's prog-rock and Brian Eno's electronic pop. Eno's influence is strong also on the atmospheric exotic-folk-jazz vignette Morning Order while Gowen's Eastern meditation Fishtank 1 echoes John McLaughlin and Every Silver Lining echoes Terry Riley's whirling minimalism. But Elibom is merely a study in bass-electronics interaction, and Chunka's Troll was a simple jazz-rock jam, and Little Dream was a ghostly free-jazz fragment.
Gowen played piano on some of the most memorable numbers, concocting a mastery fusion of neoclassical and jazz piano in Two Rainbows Daily and Soon to Fly, crafting a gentle, deceptively neoclassical mood in the nine-minute Waltz for Nobby, and intoning a pensive disjointed in Bracknell Ballad.

Meccano Pelorus (Wayside, 1991), recorded live in Holland in 1987/89, can be considered Hopper's third solo album, although the material is not all Hopper's.

Other collaborations around Europe yielded Alive (Voiceprint, 1993), featuring an all-Dutch band (Golden Section, Turfship Enterprise, Glider), And Odd Friend (Voiceprint, 1993), which is just a collection of unreleased material, Hooligan Romantics (Ponk, 1994), Carousel (Cuneiform, 1995), for a spirited sax-keyboards-guitar quintet, perhaps the best of the "Dutch" phase, that found Hopper in an unusually melodic mode (Shuffle Demons, Lock Stock And Barrel, the pensive Lux Beta), Adreamor (Impetus, 1995), improvised duets with guitarist Mark Hewins, Precisely The Opposite Of What We Now Know To Be True (Progressive International, 1995), credited to the Conglomerate, Mercy Dash (Culture Press, 1996), the second collaboration with Dean, Tippett and Gallivan, Somewhere In France (1996), with bassist Richard Sinclair, Elephants In Your Head (Voiceprint, 1997), credited to Mashu (percussionist Shyamal Maitra, Hopper, Hewins and Dean), The Mind In The Trees (Blueprint, 1998), with Dean and others.

Hugh Hopper and rock multi-instrumentalist Kramer came up with a more original project, Remark Hugh Made (Shimmy Disc, 1994), a collection of short instrumental rock tunes featuring saxophonist Gary Windo. Robert Wyatt writes and sings the only vocal track, Free Will & Testament. All In My Head, Hopper writes most of the others, which are generally inspired to simple repetitive folkish themes. But the real protagonist of the album is the arrangement. Hopper's and Kramer's bizarre minds get together to create spirited, surreal combinations while remaining within the song format, whether with the catchy and minimalist A Streetcar Named Desire (not too different from the skits of the Penguin Cafè Orchestra), the instrumental post-Hendrix noise-rock of The Twelve Chairs, the bombastic space-blues of This Island Earth, the percussive ballet with honking cars of Superthunderstingercar, the tragic, "heavy" and obsessive John Milton Is Dead (with a delirious sax solo), the Hopper-ian electronic jazz-rock of Sliding Dogs, solemn and grotesque melody of His Wife For A Hat (in two versions), or with the collage of spoken-word samples at free-jazzy rhythm of Lenny Bruce Sings. The duo followed it up with Huge (Shimmy Disc, 1997), a vastly inferior record despite a few surreal ditties (Waltz Of The Big Brains).

At the same time Hopper was beginning a collaboration with Caveman Shoestore, which yielded the moniker Caveman Hughscore and the album Caveman Hughscore (T/K, 1995).

The music on Caveman Hughscore is all by Hopper and it suffers in part from his chronic limitations: a certain banality in taking up the themes of avant-garde jazz-rock, a certain repetitiveness in the arrangements, and a lack of melodic talent that has always prevented him from writing memorable songs. Over the years his real virtue has become austerity of execution, which has reached levels worthy of chamber music. The more conceptual songs, such as A Rabbit Or A Lemon) sin of the intellectual haughtiness of groups such as the Art Bears, while displaying inexhaustible elegance in juxtaposing the aristocratic warbles of Elaine DiFalco, the syncopated tempos of Fred Chalenor and Henry Franzoni, piano dissonances (DiFalco) and abstract figures of accordion (also DiFalco) and French horn (Jen Harrison). Hopper surprises, however, in the Brechtian apologue of More Than Nothing, with a bistro accordion counterpointing a musichall cadence and the usual minimalist hypnotisms of the piano pulling the crackling bass solo; in the cool jazz interlude of Dee Dum, the most disjointed and improvised moment, imbued with psychedelic wanderings in a trepidation of drumsticks; and especially in the supernatural finale of Panic, when the alien humming of the didjeridu appears to weave the web of a mantra worthy of Steve Roach.

The project Hughscore continued with High Spot Paradox (T/K, 1997), a calmer and warmer affair (Against The Wheel, Once Upon A Babysitter, Last Word Tango).

On the third Hughscore album, Delta Flora (Cuneiform, 1999), the quartet of Hopper (bass), Fred Chalenor (bass), Elaine DiFalco (vocals, accordion, keyboards) and Tucker Martine (drums), frequently augmented with Elton Dean's alto saxophone, was in top form, playing mostly instrumental high-energy jazz-rock that doesn't scream (the eight-minute Facelift, the nine-minute Based On), assembling ghostly psychedelic noise (Robohop), intoning feathery nocturnal bebop tunes (Remind Me), and radiating fragile textures of supernatural ecstasy (Tokitae) DiFalco often stole the show, delivering charming downtempo ballads (Was A Friend, Based On) as well as more complex melodies (Ramifications, over fractured industrial polyrhythms).

Different (Blueprint, 1999) was a collaboration between Hopper and Lisa Klossner.

Keith Tippett, Elton Dean, Hugh Hopper and John Marshall also formed SoftWare.

Bone was a power-trio formed by Nick Didkovsky, Hugh Hopper and John Roulat (Forever Einstein's drummer). They debuted with Uses Wrist Grab (Cuneiform, 2003). Their heavy-metal workouts are tempered by Didkovsky's computer processing and by Hopper's electronic effects.

The posthumous Frangloband (march 2003) featured Patrice Meyer on guitar, Pierre-Olivier Govin on baritone & alto saxes, Hugh Hopper on electric bass and Francois Verly on drums & tablas performing Hopper compositions.

NUmero D'Vol (2007) collects improvised jams with saxophonist Simon Picard, keyboardist Steve Franklin and drummer Charles Hayward.

Hugh Hopper died in 2009.