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PETER SKLAIR - AN
INTER(RE)VIEW Kai Horsthemke |
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‘Estudio’ was a seminal South African group of the early 80s that played what can only be described as ‘chamber jazz’. The sound, compositions and musicianship was simply astonishing, and it is one of the many black marks on South Africa’s cultural history that the band remained unsigned. Thus, no recordings exist except for privately owned demos. ‘Estudio’ featured Russell Herman on acoustic guitar, Robbie Jansen on alto and flute, Louis Wald on violin and Tony Cedras on piano – and a young bassist on loan from the SADF, Peter Sklair. In his solo feature, Peter would play Jaco’s ‘Portrait of Tracy’, much to Robbie Jansen’s almost-fatherly delight, a technical and emotional feat that mesmerised the audience in Wits’s Great Hall that first night I saw him play. I’ve seen and heard Pete play many gigs since then, and not once have I had the impression that he was just going through the motions or, worse, selling out. (‘You’ve missed a good couple then,’ smiles Pete.) Live, apart from the work with ‘Estudio’, Pete’s gigs with ‘Unofficial Language’ (featuring pianist Paul Hanmer and drummer Ian Herman) have been particularly memorable. On record, one of my personal favourites is his vital contribution to Manfred Mann’s ‘Plains Music’. Peter is currently putting the finishing touches to what is his first solo project – a wonderful opportunity to speak to him about the album and his own bass history and orientation. Peter gave me a pre-final version of the recordings to listen to before our ‘official’ conversation. It is an album that draws the listener in by virtue of its sheer gentle beauty. Yet, with repeated listenings, numerous layers are revealed – unobvious choice of notes, hidden melodies and themes, unexpected instrumentation. In fact, it is a work full of instrumental stories (or ‘instrumentales’, to coin a neologism) which continually defy expectations. Most significantly, although the bass plays a pivotal role, it is not an archetypal bass album. There are relatively few lead bass melodies and solos, but Pete’s bass provides the rhythmic and melodic glue, the proverbial ‘narrative thread’. What is particularly noteworthy is not only the ‘less-is-definitely-more’ approach that pervades the entire album but also the distinctly South African nature of some of the tracks. Peter programmed the drums and recorded the basses and keyboards at home and used Willem Möller’s Sharp Street Studio for the more complicated stuff, like the live drum tracks, as well as recording the flute/ saxophone and guitar parts. Only Bruce Cassidy recorded his trumpet and flugelhorn parts at his (Bruce’s) own studio, while Paul Hanmer laid down the piano tracks partly at Peter’s, partly at Sharp Street. Peter would then take the recordings home to edit and mix and take them to the studio for the next musician’s contribution. Not only the recording but the composing process, too, was rather unique. Most pieces began as basic click or rhythm tracks. Pete would then improvise on the keyboard, sometimes on the basis of pre-existing or more structured parts, but more often he would be guided by the groove. Only then would he overdub the bass part (s), again mainly in improvisatory form. Once the basic tracks had been laid down, he would get the other musicians to improvise on top, predominantly by simply reacting to what already existed. The opening track, Longing, has a sunny, laidback major-key groove, but a few pops and chromatic bass notes prevent the listener’s attention from drifting, as do the stops and starts and the instrumental exits and (re-)entries. The drums are programmed but skilfully augmented ‘real live’ by Rob Watson, and Willem Möller is on guitar. Why does the opening bass melody never return? ‘Once I’d stated the melody,’ says Peter, ‘I’d said what I wanted to say, and I could move into another direction. … At which point do you say, “The painting’s finished”?’ Peter found that, when improvising, the ‘less-is-more’-approach proved to be the best. ‘When getting more technical, the music would suffer. It would then be more about the bass’ (which Peter was trying to avoid: he preferred to use the bass ‘just for colouring’), ‘but what I was trying to achieve was to get the other musicians to react to what I had laid down.’ The Nitelights of the next tune are constituted both by a bass harmonic ostinato and by shimmering counterharmonics – echoes of mid-70s Jaco. What I identify as ‘Bootsy-ish’ effects (Peter used a wah effect with some delay on it) turn out not to be deliberate. ‘I never really listened to Bootsy Collins – or perhaps I was influenced, in a more subconscious kind of way.’ The drums were recorded last, on top of the programmed bits. Peter asked Rob to play in ‘more of a military style, to add some darkness to the mood’. ‘Sometimes the very first thing I’d record, like a keyboard part, was what I liked a lot and ended up keeping. I’d get protective over it.’ Déjà Vu has gorgeously cascading keyboard arpeggios (‘originally written on piano’) anchored by an unassuming yet melodic bass and is a vehicle for Bruce Cassidy’s flugelhorn and McCoy Mrubata’s tenor. Rob’s drumming, like on the previous track, is sympathetic, understated, yet propulsive. ‘What Rob does is – perhaps I’m biased – right up there with my favourite drumming albums. … It’s fresh, it’s spontaneous …” Despite the contemporary sounding rhythm section (again a combination of programmed and live drums), Bolero is reminiscent of early 70s Miles. It has a hip, phat groove laid down by a rocksteady, unwavering bass and interesting-sounding drums. Paul Hanmer plays piano, McCoy is on flute and tenor, Bruce Cassidy on both trumpet and flugelhorn, Willem Möller plays echo-drenched guitar. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it was ‘written off the drum groove, which originally had a life of its own’. Asked about the Miles reference, Pete replies, ‘Yes – perhaps not a conscious reference, more a result of having internalised that period’s recordings. … But what is noteworthy are the completely different recording processes: with Miles, everything was recorded together – the way you’re supposed to record this sort of stuff.’ Yet, Peter’s process of recording everything and everyone separately certainly has its own benefits and rewards, chiefly the thoughtful and responsive layering of instrumental tracks. Regarding the title, ‘Bolero’ refers to the same slow, sensual build-up towards a climax and subsequent easing-off as it occurs in Ravel’s piece of the same name. Light begins in a bouncy, almost derivative four-on-the-floor fashion but, again, well-chosen chromatic bass notes serve to counteract predictability, as does the rhythmic breakdown after three-odd minutes into the piece. The bouncy bass returns, underneath Paul Hanmer’s piano improvisations, as well as (again!) a rubbery Bootsy-type bass, but the expected drum groove fails to materialise – tantalisingly so. The second rhythmic breakdown happens at about six-odd minutes, and after a bass solo workout a distinctly South African-flavoured bassline picks up the groove, laced with harmonics, and the keyboard provides unorthodox shimmers, as do the drums and cymbals. The end section bass line ‘came out of the improvisation, a “no-time” sort of feel …- the tempo is still there, but it’s more … It’s like a rocket ship taking off, it loses gravity. The end section goes into more of a spiritual type of direction.’ A Jacoesque bass opens Prayer, leading over swirling keyboard washes and subliminally intense drumming. Again, the ‘prayer’ takes many unexpected turns. (Or is this because of the unpredictability of the deity addressed in the prayer?) And again, although Pete gets to stretch out a little, he does only what suits the track. ‘I found that if I do something really technical, it takes away from the musical aspect. Once you’ve done all the technical bits, what do you do afterwards? … To do the athleticism and to be musical at the same time is the really hard one, the thing that characterises only the top players.’ The piece has a ‘brilliant piano track, but I’m not sure whether I should include it. It is a bit of challenge – what to put on it, apart from the bass and keyboard.’ With Rob’s drum track, there was little hesitation: ‘It is beyond what one could actually expect.’ The mood of the piece is similar to that of Longing, ‘a sense of desire, wanting something that’s not there, … something heartfelt’. On the final track, Another Time, after some initial Jaco-style palm slaps, a distinctly Southern African rhythm groove (‘I’m not sure about that yet’), overlaid with sampled voices, takes hold. A rhythmic breakdown occurs after two-plus minutes. With the return of the full rhythm section, Lawrence Matshiza turns in a fluttery guitar solo. With the second breakdown, it is all melodic bass and shimmering keyboards. Yet, the beat never returns, not even when one most expects it to: another one of Peter’s sleight-of-hands. ‘There’s an aspect in the music that’s in the listener’s mind, which they’re filling in … Hopefully the listener is contributing the part in their heads.’ Did Peter consciously set out to contradict or contravene listeners’ expectations? ‘No, I’m not being deliberately devious. The progression would be just what happened to make sense to me. But I’ve always enjoyed what isn’t necessarily predictable.’ With regard to influences, ‘Jaco is the voice, if I had to pick one, … like Miles, Coltrane, Jimi Hendrix, a guy with a unique vision’. What about Paul Jackson? ‘I love Paul Jackson.’ Another influence, ‘whose playing has been underrated, is Alphonso Johnson’. For Peter, the best gig he ever experienced was a cocktail type gig in LA by drummer Andre Ceccarelli’s trio: ‘The playing, especially by Alphonso Johnson and Jeff Beasley, was just awesome – although they probably wouldn’t even remember that particular gig: there were only about six tables of people.’ With regard to local influences, especially in the light of the consideration that Pete’s album could only come out of South Africa, he spontaneously mentions Sipho Gumede, ‘especially his work with Spirits Rejoice and later Sakhile’. Yet, Peter does not just want to single out players like Sipho, Bakithi Kumalo and Fana Zulu, ‘such distinctive voices in their own right’: ‘South Africa is a rich source of bass. If you go through the list of players in our collective, there are really incredible guys! … South Africa is a complicated country, but the good things about it are amazing, really special!’ Did it help or hinder Pete to have a father like Sam and a brother like Josh? It certainly helped, he says. ‘It meant everyday access to Jimi Hendrix, Stan Getz … But I am basically self-taught, I taught myself how to play bass and to read. … The 70s was a great decade – I feel so privileged for having been exposed to all that music, which was just before the advent of all that technology, computers and stuff.’ We talk about players today, especially young players, who have the technique, the sound, who have studied the greats and play in their idiom – but who still seem to be lacking something. What is it? ‘My answer to that would be, what they’re missing is the rhythm of the time. And it’s not their fault at all: they just happen to be in another time and in another place.’ Shortly afterwards my wife Edda, who has just been to see ‘Chicago’ in a nearby cinema, joins us, and our conversation swings towards film. Peter turns out to be something of a movie buff. Yet, it occurs to me only later while driving home that his music certainly – and probably not accidentally – has an almost cinematic quality, the character of a soundtrack for an as yet unmade film. And I, for one, am looking forward to the sequel. Kai Horsthemke April/ May 2003 |
