Creativity Quote by Pat Mastelotto

It reads like locker-room candor, but it’s really a manifesto for how great rhythm sections think: not as two players stacking parts, but as one ecosystem constantly reallocating sonic real estate. Pat Mastelotto’s “I basically play in his holes” is intentionally unglamorous phrasing for a high-skill practice - leaving space, then making that space feel inevitable. The joke-y bluntness matters because it punctures the myth of drummers as pure force. Here, the drummer is an arranger with sticks, a specialist in subtraction.

The specifics are telling. “Cymbals” versus “skin sounds,” “metal tones” versus “wood” - he’s talking timbre like a painter, not just rhythm like a metronome. When one player floods the high-frequency shimmer, the other moves to round, bodily attack; when one leans into bright metallic pitch, the other shifts to organic, damped color. It’s call-and-response without trading licks, a live mix decision made at human speed. That strategy keeps dense music from becoming a single slab of noise, especially in bands where interlocking precision is the whole point.

Contextually, Mastelotto’s career (not least his work in King Crimson’s later, polyrhythmic lineups) is built on collaborative complexity. The subtext is humility with teeth: virtuosity isn’t just what you can play, it’s what you choose not to, and how quickly you can sense what the other person is occupying. “Holes” aren’t emptiness; they’re the architecture that lets the groove breathe.