(photo by Alyssa Reed)
Gregg Skloff has played contrabass since 1990. From 1990 to '95 he took lessons from George Wellington Sr. (founder of the Hawaii Contrabass Festival), also spending three years in Punahou School's esteemed Symphony Orchestra. Meanwhile, having begun on bass guitar in 1991, Gregg listened obsessively to music ranging from jazz to punk, metal to pop, prog to reggae, and beyond. This perhaps contributed to his abiding view of music as a totality, and his intolerance of genre-based jingoism.
Since his move to the Pacific Northwest in 1997, Gregg has played in various improvisational settings with dozens of musicians, including Nick Bindeman, Gust Burns, Arrington de Dionyso, Brad Gibson, Michael Griffen, Nathan Levine, Kelvin Pittman, Ben L. Robertson, Bert Wilson, McCloud Zicmuse, and many others. He has also devoted his efforts to several rock bands, including Counterfeit Monsters, Thunder!Thunder!Thunder! (a pre-Explode Into Colors project with Claudia Meza and Lisa Schonberg), and Captain's Daughter.
In 2009, ESP-Disk released the album Gigantomachia by The Naked Future (featuring de Dionyso, Skloff, pianist Thollem McDonas and drummer John Niekrasz) to international acclaim. Gregg has been a regular participant with the Creative Music Guild's large ensembles (for guest artists such as John Gruntfest, Urs Leimgruber, and Bhob Rainey) and with the Creative Composers Collective of Portland. Gregg's work on his own, meanwhile, conjures a uniquely intense and enigmatic mood, whether in the form of his fractured lo-fi hermit-pop outfit Cloaca Clock or in the swirling storms and sweeping vistas of his solo instrumental performances.