Andy Sheppard / Michel Benita / Sebastian Rochford – Trio Libero [2012]
At the time, that was the most spacious I’d ever played, it was so different from anything I’d done previously. The whole album was done in six hours. It just flowed, with no headphones and no bass amp in the room, so it was the quietest I’d ever played. In that way I feel it’s quite a pure album.
There was one tune that we’d played loads of times, for about two years, so we knew it really well. Then, when we recorded it, Andy suddenly played it without any tempo, without us discussing it. There was no question, we just followed it, because we had that kind of freedom as a band.
Then meeting [ECM records producer] Manfred Eicher was very inspiring. I like the way he always explains things in visual terms. For the first time, it felt OK to not have to play all the time. I could play as little as I wanted to. That’s what I was thinking about on that album; ‚How little can I play and still affect the movement of the music?‘ Because sometimes as a drummer, if you stop playing everyone else thinks something’s wrong! In that band it felt okay, and that’s part of the new Polar Bear stuff as well. I’ve said, ‚If I’m not playing, don’t think it’s because I want the music to stop, it’s just what I feel like doing.‘
(Sebastian Rochford, source: TheQuietus)