Geoffrey Armes: Bio

Bio
Geoffrey Armes
Composer/Musician/Producer
Guitars, Voices, Percussion, Keyboards

Peaceful Traveller

In the seventies as London literally darkened with power cuts, strikes and social unrest...
Life was violent in the South London of the seventies, so Geoffrey Armes resolved to express something else with his art. By age fifteen, having been introduced to the music of Gordon Lightfoot, he had discovered the acoustic guitar, and the singer/songwriter form, as well as imbibed the influence of Celtic harpist Allan Stivell. He also notes: "My mother first introduced me to the East, via her love of Ravi Shankar records, and Umm Kulthum's radio broadcasts, when I was very small. There was something innate for us about those sounds." Living in multiracial Brixton as a child, with reggae on the streets, pop and art music at home, gave him a deep appreciation of the breadth of music, and the myriad possibilities of expression offered. He thrived on the gestalt, and playing guitar in a rock music context at that time seemed to offer a vehicle that could say anything.

...studying musics, both radical and orthodox
Jamming with Reebop Kwaku Baah (affiliated with Traffic and Dizzy Gillespie) gave him an education in the value of polyrhythmic groove as well the beauty of hand drumming. He played bass in an improvising jazz/punk band whose members' credentials included the Soft Machine and Third Ear. He composed and performed for Choreographers at the Laban Centre, while studying electronic music and harmony at London's Goldsmiths College in New Cross. The harmony work precipitated keyboard study, and to this day Geoffrey remains a more than competent pianist, while working with choreographers brought about a life-long love for, and skill with, percussion. During this period Geoffrey facilitated music workshops for young people, throughout London, on the Aylesbury estate, in North Kensington, Beckenham and Penge.

...through to the early eighties, when a new conservatism, both political and musical weighed in...
"We recorded in Camden Town, sharing studio space with Dave Stewart and Annie Lennox. Some of the sounds we conjured ended up on their 'Sweet Dreams' album." Geoffrey had fallen in with entrepreneur Reynard Falconer, and wangled himself some free time, or rather, paid for it by assisting in building Falconer's first studio, alongside Dave and Annie. The resulting recordings elicited nice noises in the Melody Maker, but nothing more developed as Geoffrey embarked to Holland, fancying that the continental coffee-culture might suit his stylings more than England's then determinedly pub driven nightlife. Here he created with bassist improviser Ed De Vos, while working in the Rotterdam Dans Akademie. Geoffrey recorded in the now defunct Hal 4 watertower studio, as well as performed in Amsterdam and Groningen. Moving on to Berlin, he composed and performed under the auspices of The British Council, created sound-montages for the expressionist painter Ter-Hell, wrote music for the local Contemporary Dance community, performed with 'JazzNoise' collectives with unlikely names such as Purity of Essence, and took part in Performance Art events in NeuKolln and Ernst-Reuter Platz. Here too he worked with young people, this time with sculptor Arnold Hertel on his Projekt Trollihausen in Frohnau. A partnership with American singer Lisa Lowell eventually brought him to New York City for the first time, performing at rock clubs such as CBGB, the Bitter End, classical venues like the Juilliard Theatre and the Merce Cunningham Westbeth studio, and site specific events such as Ruby Shang's Cooper Union Event.

On into the nineties, and a sense of new opening...
Improvising is an important process in Geoffrey's intuitive composing style, and staying on in New York, he put this to good use around the Modern Dance and Theatre scene, initially with Doris Rudko at the Juilliard School, and The Martha Graham Company. Relationships he forged at that time with the Merce Cunningham Company, the Neighborhood Playhouse Theatre, and many others, have continued to this day. Geoffrey also worked as a session player with producers such as Tom Desisto, Butch Jones, Bernie Worrell, Fred Schneider, Frankie Knuckles, NEC Computers, William 'Space' Patterson, and toured Japan twice with choreographer Kazuko Hirayabashi. He wrote and recorded the Modern Dance class CD Stretch and Breathe (1999).

Year 2000...
Now resident in NYC, Geoffrey began a kind of in-situ re-examination of his musical roots, with a series of recordings created in his home-studio. An invocative, peacefully spiritual content is the leit-motif of this work. The first was the dreamy, ambient, Sufi-Celt Green Love (2002) which "...epitomised a return journey for me, back to the singer-songwriter world that first pulled me into active music-making," says Geoffrey. He let the guitars dominate, with only flashes and light touches of percussion or keyboards, just enough to round out the sound-world. He was looking to create a specific feel of robust but intimate peace, with a hint of the mood Japanese artists call 'aware', a sort of nostalgic, melancholic contemplation.

Elemental Red's (2005) acoustic verve, symbol and metaphor-laden poetry, and highly propulsive but acoustic production value, results in a more directly spiritual record, motivated by a restless depiction of quest. Namechecking Jung, laden with quotes from JG Bennett, GI Gurdjieff, and perhaps most obviously Muhammed Subuh, this drive, while peaceful, is immediately felt. So many roads sung of, which road? Meta-roads? Pan Celtic guitar derivatives augmented by African percussion act as a trellis for elegantly eloquent searching song-writing that rides melody, that is sweet, honest, natural and highly affective. Next Geoffrey returned to the textural and expressive possibilities of dub, and fourth world intersections, where the world of traditional music is augmented, infiltrated and filtered by technological sounds and paradigms.

The expressive vibe of ep length Ambient Black (2005) juxtaposes translucent ambient remixes of tracks from Elemental Red with lush, funky and dubby new instrumentals. Geoffrey has studied and played music from the Sahel and Northern Sahara, and some of these pieces feature wordless vocalisations eerily reminiscent of the Muezzin tower.

The textural Spirit Dwelling (2005) is the most ambitious recording Geoffrey has created yet. Sonic architecture for the heart, mind and soul, this is a gallery of deconstructed groove soundscapes that mix udus, talking drums, rainsticks and the like, with treated guitars that bend lengthy modal melodies around drones and the occasionally very pure acoustic note. A sound that invites contemplation or even 'no mind' peace, yet at the same time energizes and inspires movement and effort.

Geoffrey's latest CD, Noor, an exploration of faith viewed through the prism of the life of the 'Sufi Princess' Noor Inayat Khan who was executed in Dachau, has been described as a unique mix of acoustic folk, middle eastern melodies, jazzy vibes and ethereal vocals .

Interwoven with his aesthetic journey is the arc of Geoffrey's spiritual life; how he arrives is as important as where. Without being precious he tries to do things the right way. What use is the note if it is laden with wrong action in its making?