Hugh Hopper, 64, bassist for rock band Soft Machine
NEW YORK - Hugh Hopper, who as the bassist for the British progressive rock band Soft Machine was a central figure in the forward-looking music scene that bloomed in Canterbury in the 1960s and 1970s, died June 7 in the county of Kent, England. He was 64 and lived in Whitstable, Kent.
The cause was leukemia, said Steven Feigenbaum, owner of Cuneiform Records in Silver Spring, Md., which has released 15 recordings involving Mr. Hopper since 1987.
In addition to being an artful, textural player, Mr. Hopper was the composer of brooding jazz-rock tunes like "Facelift" and "Kings and Queens."
Soft Machine was the best-known representative of a lively rock outpost that produced bands like the Wilde Flowers, Caravan, and, a bit later, National Health, where the signature sound was an amalgam of psychedelic rock and jazz. Along with contemporaries elsewhere in England like Pink Floyd, the Nice, King Crimson, and Yes, Soft Machine helped introduce the darting, dissonant chord progressions and improvisational daring of modern jazz to listeners of electric rock.
Mr. Hopper was part of the band during its most influential period, from 1967 or 1968 through 1973, playing on and composing for its first several albums. His compositions combined a bass pulse and droning melodic lines with electronic sounds and tape loops, leaving room for improvisatory explosions. Although he was admittedly unflashy as a player, his choice of notes, his resonant tone, and frequent use of the fuzz bass made his sound distinctive.
"He wasn't the most chops-aholic guy," Feigenbaum said, noting that Mr. Hopper was always more interested in blending with the band and knitting the music together from the bottom than with virtuosic playing. "But if you heard three notes, you knew it was either him or someone imitating him."
