Sarb didn’t like confrontation. Doesn’t. He’d rock up at mum’s house wearing a polite half-smile, and a non-confrontational collarless shirt. Pastel colours, nothing too strong. Maybe a white one, or a light grey one. He’d speak Punjabi or Hindi softly, not too brash. My family nodded and smiled, and he responded. Nicely. Sarb was nice.
When IT happens it’s uncomfortable for everyone. Mostly though, its uncomfortable because he’s uncomfortable. There’s one space where he is comfortable speaking his mind. It’s the music. Because this, to his mind, isn’t confrontational. It’s just necessary. It needs to be right.
We didn’t speak on a level before the initial break up, but when we did start communicating one thing was clear. We listened to music in the same way. The same things made us tick. The both of us would mess with melodies and chord progressions until something hit something like a spiritual chord.
Sarb floated upstairs. We spoke about something, probably related to work. Or I took the piss out of his interaction with one of my parents. Then we got to work.
We’d set up the mics on the drums, and check the recording levels. ‘Ranj, this will be 20/30 mins max.’ Richer Sounds (we dropped ‘Sounds’ later) was an easy drum part, apparently.
20 mins in we hadn’t gotten past the first minute. Sarb was feeling the pressure. Something (always something different) wasn’t quite right.
‘I just keep thinking about something else, you know?’ I knew. Tracking was weird. Recording separately on your own listening to the music in the headphones was just unnatural. And you would just forget what you were doing and then you’d come back and you were off. It was different to recording live, where different triggers and the vibrations would feel like you were an important organ in a living breathing body.
We got it right. An hour or two later than estimated. But the drums were special. We’d captured the moment… Sarb in his element. On playback of the recording you could see Sarb playing, as you can in all of his drums. Sarb made his drums sing. Technical, intricate, spiritual, joyous, relentless, and – strangely, but not strangely if you knew Sarb – violent.
‘Fancy a cup of tea?’.
‘Na, I better go. Missus, innit’.
At the door he left me his limp hand to give me a non-confrontational handshake goodbye.
‘Laters man’.
‘Safe’.
