Ske

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Ske is a new band from Italy with connections to Yugen. They have just released their wonderful 1000 Autunni album and I caught up with Paolo for the Ske story.
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When, where and by whom was your band
born ? Did any of you, past and present members, play in any other
bands before joining up in your band ? Why did you choose that name
and which bands were you influenced by ?

First of all i am a progressive rock
fan. I dig a moltitude of things in music and i found myself
attracted by this kind of music since high school. I re-discovered
palying music thanks to this, or maybe it's the other way around, i'm
not even sure. Anyways I've been toying about releasing some of my
compositions for quite a lot of time, but somehow i've never found
the right people to do so, and i was very inexperienced on how the
whole disk-making process could actually happen. So i joined another
band, and stole them all those secrets only to come back to my
original project. LOL! Not entirely true, but not that false either.
Actually i gladly joined Yugen in 2005 to record its debupt album
"Labirinto d'acqua", not knowing this would become my most
important musical experiance till now. We recorded 3 albums and
toured live with different formations in these last 6 years, playing
a kind of music that to many sounds too different even for progrock
standards. Parallel to that i toured with French TV on two european
tours (2005 and 2008 IIRC) and recorded a couple of tunes on their #9
and #10 albums. After this last tour, in 2009 i sat down and said to
myself:"Alright, it's my turn now". One year later, thanks
to the production of Marcello Marinone and Francesco Zago of AltrOck,
i had all the composition ready. Some musicians (mainly from Yugen
and Kurai) i already knew i would have loved to work with and infact
i wrote specifically for them, some other i found during tours (like
Pierre and Fabrice from Camembert) or thanks to collaborations (like
Nic from Ciccada) and i'm glad that such gifted musicians had this
striking role in the music making of this album. The group name was
the most logical choice as it's my nickname since i've started this
progrock adventure back in high school, so there you go, no esoteric
or deep the-reason-of-life meaning behind it. But the names of the
bands that influenced me are way cooler, like Gentle Giant, Hatfield
and the North, Henry Cow, King Crimson, Picchio dal Pozzo,
Änglagård...i mean how can you beat that?

Over to your only album so far. Please
tell us more about your 1000 Autunni album from earlier this year.

Given the complete lack of appeal and
meaning of the band's name, i just HAD to come up with something
smarter for the album name. So during one night of cartoon
full-immersion (i'm a huge fan of animation, that being a part of my
day job) i found this Yoji-jukugo: "one day, a thousand autumns"
that reflected very well what i was feeling at the time about my
music. It deals with a strong feeling of desire that somehow changes
your perception of time passing by. How cool is that! So visually the
most natural approach was to shot pictures that expressed this
feeling, I got the chance to do so during an unusual instrument
recording session in Presolana mountains with Jos Olivini, a lovely
place blessed by a misty autumnal afternoon.

Sonically the album features a pretty
wide -but not entirely uncommon- range of instruments, starting of
course from my own personal fetish: analog vintage keyboards
(Hammond, Rhodes, Wurlitzer, ARP, Farfisa, Mellotron blabla), to the
more usual voice, el.guitar, drums and bass, to idiophones
(vibraphone, marimba, xylophone, glockenspiel), clarinets, flute,
saxes, trombone, violin, harp, grand piano, to some unusual ones like
hang or rotative harp. I tried to use these different colours both
"traditionally" and "over the edge" to seek for
the uniqueness that only real instruments can give.

The music is a bit difficult to
pinpoint. But your music is pretty close to what Picchio Dal Pozzo
did. But how would you describe your music and which bands would you
compare yourself to ?

The group's music was described as a
meeting point between symph progrock and avant/rio music. I really
didn't think too much on "what is this sounding like?" when
composing, so i guess that's the reason why those "reference"
points generally used to describe music in this case sometimes might
work, but sometimes might be misleading. I've read reviews labelling
the same tune this, that and the contrary of that. Overall i much
prefer to describe the attitude behind the compositional choices that
have been made, rather than the occasional meeting point with this or
that band. Sometimes i started with very simple ideas and built a
whole tune bulding from there, or i started with rigid numerical
schematics, only to break them down when they were not leading
towards the right direction. Some other times i had a mood and a kind
of arrangment clear in my mind but i still didn't have the notes
down, and in one case i even took some radical composition decision
during the mix session. In some cases i used the classical
modifications to build material (“Sotto sotto” main theme is a
perfect palindrome for example, and there are a LOT of reflections as
well in that song ), sometimes i used classical methods like canon
while some other time i just jammed on grooves and took my material
from there. I worked a lot on giving to the different approaches to
rhythmic divisions and sub-divisions an almost-straight feel, so that
the rythmic choices could be enjoyed both on a more superficial and
on a deeper level without loosing the focus. So overall you can guess
why it took me so long to finish out all the work, i had to find a
different way to make it work for each composition, let alone the
three "Scogli" which are actually children of the same
mindset. And this lead to thrash a LOT of efforts before reaching the
desired amount of material. In partial contradiction to what i just
stated, i will say that i am happy that you spotted the Picchio dal
Pozzo similarity, in fact i joined Picchio together with some other
Yugen pal for a reunion concert at AltrOck08, and you can hear the
result in the "A_live" album, out on AltrOck. So i guees
some of their magic stayed with me, after all. Of course Yugen music
had a huge influence on me as well, together with those classic 70's
progbands and the Canterbury scene as well. I like em all, and i was
happy to show it in my own way.

What have you been up to since the
release of this album ?

i've been touring with Yugen, we have
played at the famous Gouveia Art Rock festival in Portugal and at RIO
fest in France. Meanwhile i've started to work on a new project that
is still off the radars so i can't say much about it. I also started
to rearrange SKE material for a possible live show, and i started to
record some things for the upcoming Garamond album. I also got an
interesting offer from another band to join, so stay tuned!

What is your plans for this year and
beyond ?

well, it's our strong desire to have a
live version of this band, but i also know this is only going to
happen if some festival will be interested in having us perform
there. That could be a solid starting point for planning some other
smaller gigs around south Europe. I know that usually bands work the
other way around, by starting with little gigs to end up at some big
festival, but this is not the regular band made of friends who meet
after school or work and try to do nice music together, this is more
a collection of kindred souls that i felt had something worth being
said altogether, not caring for logistic problems such as living
hundreds of kilometers apart each other. Beside this, i already
started to work on new material but as the result is too much similar
to what we already said with "1000 Autunni", i think i will
concentrate on some other project before, to make sure that i say
something when i have something worth saying.

To wrap up this interview, is there
anything you want to add to this interview ?

Yes, i'd like to thank each and every
person that by buying albums supports the efforts to make music that
does not help to pay bills, each of you is really important for us to
survive as a band, so THANK YOU. I'm very glad we could make music in
these times when we can get in touch with the whole world quite
easily, i hope we can meet as many of you as possible in the future.
Meanwhile, for comments and nice words you can reach me here:
[email protected]. For complaints, refunds or insults feel free to
write me here: [email protected]

Thank you for this interview

Their album is available from here and is streamed here

Their homepage is here

Edited by toroddfuglesteg - October 19 2011 at 07:59