Geoffrey Armes

Engrossed · 9 days ago

hiatus… considering instruments.. projects… life… homeward bound..

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Local Listening · 19 days ago

Three local CDs on yesterday….

Kathy Fleischmann band’s newie, which suddenly makes sense as a seventies throwback, though some of those seventies feminists might question certain of her lyrics in an otherwise astutely poetic album that sounds like a raw rock/pop kick back against ponderous prog mediated by guitarist Kevin McLeod’s sometimes Steely Dan tinged chord voicing…

...whereas it’s prog, not the ponderous version, but a lilting folky vaudevillian jazzed vibraluxed guitar sponsored by Reich and Debussy strings vibe that informs Eric Margan and the Red Lions Midnight Book. High end production from the 2” tape recording to the glossy book of lyrics and photographs, worth living with..

...avoiding both 70s and 80s tropes and sonically looking firmly forward with feet in a sixties almost blues sensibility imbued with nostalgic story telling framed by shiny keyboard and weirdly nineties trip-hoppy NYC singer-songwriter musicianship, is Joy Askew’s heartfelt ‘Pirate of Eel Pie’.

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Mastered Tracks - some notes on hearing - · 24 days ago

I was confident enough to let the hands go. The loose jammy stuff feels good.

Making these pieces in a way was all about editing in the best bits, and then creating the right environments to show them off.

It’s ‘environmental’ music, an expression of the milieu in which it was created, as well as a sound available to complete the listener’s habitat. It has its own sonic presence, but sits comfortably within yours.

Mastering always seems to enhance the space in the music, the rooms (reverbs etc), and the hiatus between notes.

Plan the release….

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Hemisphere · 31 days ago

Hemispheres?

Piece Titles:

Endless Mansion
The Neigborhood Dubhouse
Some Helpers
A Narrative Of Paradise
Ancient Flow
Light Fantastic Trip
Friedrichstrasse
Tuning a Soul
Geology
Clay Clusters
Possibility
With Clarity
A Still Place

Goodness
Improvised Requiem For Pearl
Dark Earth
Las Americas

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Listening · 34 days ago

I completed the final mix for a bonus piece, probably one of four freebies to come with the upcoming ‘Hemisphere’ release, this one featuring tracks of Kevin Mcleod’s guitars, plus my pianos, synths, heavy bass drums and a squeaky bench as well as cries and whispers etc etc. Much of the work involved eqing out unwanted frequencies, cutting unwanted parts, and creating light and shadow via levels.

Anyway, so virtually done with having to listen to my own stuff I’ve spent time with others.. nearly all classics from the past rather than contemporary sounds. You’re welcome to make suggestions for the latter, but I’m underwhelmed by most of my internet finds. I hear lots of good and worthy, but remain unmoved.

Anyway, in no particular order

the Catherine Wheel: David Byrne’s 1980 score for Twyla Tharp’s ballet, remastered but downloaded from itunes, has survived well, not as rich as my Life in a Bush of Ghosts, which I have remastered on CD,... that’s congruent with my memory of 1980 Goldsmiths which is where and when I first heard these. Both with a lot of nice studio trickery I’d love to emulate.

speaking of 1980, a remastered Steely Dan’s Gaucho… scintillating and beautiful, better than I remembered, although the vocal sound is very peculiar at times

listening to these has been heartening when addressing the grooves of Hemisphere, as I discover they’re in the pocket alright

a remastered Gone To Earth, David Sylvian from 1986, lovely dark and warm textural layers, again a great reference for Hemisphere, I’m in the right place

Kate Bush’s Hounds Of Love, of which I enjoy the pop songs and the obvious hits now, more than I did then… and I find the Celtic/Ninth wave stuff a little less enthralling..

got Fulfillingness’ First Finale out, nice memory of being on a roof in North London and looking down at a Graphic Artist dancing around his studio to Boogie On Reggae Woman.. that’s a great trio of discs with Talking Book, Innervisions

the new Depeche Mode, good in its sounds and studio stuff

Fox Base Alpha, which is classic English, London pop, summery as the breeze on Regents Park mid-July

Kathy Fleischmann’s The Second Took Even Longer, because I played on it

remastered Electric Ladyland, as stirring as it ever was, and yes, bits in the corner I never heard before

got Sowing the Seeds, and Elemental, plus Rain Tree Crow coming remastered,

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Guitar Overdubs · 39 days ago

I received some guitar overdubs over the internet from Kevin McLeod.

Basically I’d sent him a mono mix of a long (12’) live take featuring percussion, synth and piano, plus faux Arabic strings and electronics.. enough to suggest an outline… and in return came three mono tracks of well played guitar lines.

So, over the last 48 hours in spare moments I’ve done the transfers, re-amped, and edited for shape. This last incorporating a fair amount of slash and burn, but applied no more rigorously than I do with my own playing.

There’s now a deliciously eccentric coda featuring layered guitars and the live bass/drums, a long pointillist middle section of drifting instruments from all denominations, and a beginning of swelling sustained delay swept guitars.

Plus conga, 808 sounds, flute, horn additions.

This should become a nice little download only piece with a working title of

en las americas

to adumbrate the new collection perhaps now entitled

hemisphere

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A note about Studio 4 · 47 days ago

ghosts dwell in this eerily dark and sober room… Martha Graham, Doris Rudiko, Jane Dudley, Pearl Lang taught, and have now passed on… a number of well known actors have listened and moved… also the Playhouse still resonates with the feeling of the nineteen-twenties studio it once was, there are original fixtures and pieces of furniture littering the place… Studio 4 is a floor through hall raised up through two apartment levels, in other words a high ceiling, but tenebrous, despite the wall of mirrors and light through windows… the floor has been burnished over the decades by characters well known and obscure, all working, all realising some previously obsfucated aspect of self into ‘legitimate’ (I use the word guardedly but don’t have a better right now) expression… in other words the air through which my sound vibrates is laden with meaning and memory…

this is where the music for the new release was first conceived and recorded, and you can see and hear older work made there here

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How these pieces of music were created: · 49 days ago

I’ve played on a semi- regular basis for dance and movement classes since 1980, and and have spent the last seven years or so twice weekly at the Neighborhood Playhouse Theatre School working with actors. Over this period I’ve developed a number of quirky approaches in an attempt to amuse myself, the students and the instructors, and have engaged in some serious music making.

The seeds for these new pieces were captured live in Studio 4 of The Playhouse, February 2009, and this month I was playing piano, synth (Korg Poly 800 II) and a Roland Handsonic 15 percussion controller. The recorder was a Tascam DP 004, which records in 16 bit, using two tracks. Track one was a line in from the a Crate CA 30 amp, which handled the synth and the handsonic, track two was the sound of the room itself, i.e. natural reverb, chatter, feet, the piano, traffic, the sounds coming out of the amp, the clicking of keys and the thump of hands on pads. I then imported these 16 bit wav files into my Tascam 2488 (working on in 24 bit).

The performances were solo, so I was playing three instruments ‘simultaneously’. The way I conceive it is that I am playing one whole groove or piece, but only realising aspects of it at any one time. So, I may keep a rhythm happening with one hand on the handsonic and play melodies on the synth or piano with the other, or play ostinato on the piano and switch between the synth and the handsonic with the other. An idea might start on the synth but the run finishes with a flourish on the piano and handsonic. So on and so forth.

Once I began working on it at the home studio, I had two jumping off points. One, how to work with, accentuate, contrast, the sound of the ambient room, and two, how to judiciously fill in the rest of the piece, that had been hanging in the Playhouse air un-realised and un-articulated. I also had the sonic possibilities presented by having two relatively busy lo fi mono tracks as the foundation.

The stereo image became key. Sometimes the foundation tracks sounded good panned hard left and right, other times a core drum taken direct is dead centre with the ambient material flown off somewhere else. Most of the time I made just a few edits to impose order and began overdubbing right away, but there were a couple of occasions when I excerpted loops over which to lay fresh material, or ended up with an almost all new piece that incorporated only fragments from the original seed. Long codas of new work appeared after initial burbles of mono. I connected different takes of the same piece in different tempi via drones and written transitions as I became intrigued again by the natural breath and arc of music freed from the grid of loops and metronomes. I both obscured and teased time further by incorporating tempo delays that were sometimes in sync, but sometimes wafting close but not really within the rhythm at hand. One piece was left, unadorned, where it fell.

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New Work · 52 days ago

Well, there are sixteen of these strange hybrid pieces completed, some propelled and collagist, others still, reflective, dense layers of gently swirling sound… and time is elastic, tempi race, slow, drift within the pieces, which is perhaps an eccentric approach given the proliferation of loop and metronome based musics that have come about during these digital decades. No vocals except off-stage mutterings and cries.

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Kathy Fleischmann · 57 days ago

I’m listening to Kathy Fleischmann’s new CD, “The Second Took Even Longer,” that I did keyboard/percussion overdubs for, last year. A very brave new world session, in that I made the recordings here, then transferred the resulting wav files over the internet. The band, of course, was working in the ‘real’ studio. Kevin McLeod co-produced, along with Kathy. Desisto mastered, and Dan Herman tells me he has a copy, and no doubt will play it, but I am not sure when it will be officially released. Check Kathy’s website for news

now available here and via CD baby

My parts: mock frippertronics feedback, quavering drones, hippy flute synthesis, folky piano as well as bongos on two songs.

Relaxed but energised, with variety. Distinctive and personal.

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