New Music up at GeoffreyArmes.com
Press release:
New Downloadable Format for Geoffrey Armes' Latest Musical Creation
The new release from Geoffrey Armes represents a number of ‘firsts’ for the UK born NYC/Berlin residing composer. Not only is it his first ‘live’ recording but it is the first he is offering for sale via download on his own GeoffreyArmes.com website.
He is also introducing a new concept of ‘environmental music’ where the sonics of a specific live environment are melded ...
New Music up at GeoffreyArmes.com
Press release:
New Downloadable Format for Geoffrey Armes' Latest Musical Creation
The new release from Geoffrey Armes represents a number of ‘firsts’ for the UK born NYC/Berlin residing composer. Not only is it his first ‘live’ recording but it is the first he is offering for sale via download on his own GeoffreyArmes.com website.
He is also introducing a new concept of ‘environmental music’ where the sonics of a specific live environment are melded with subsequent overdubs and the imagined space of the listener. Using the source material and the sound of the room, as well as studio trickery he is able to make sound spaces complement, blend, and remain in context even as they speak with their own voices.
Aware of current listening and purchasing mores Armes has created a “circular series that can be approached from anywhere, any order, in keeping with modern day shuffle, itunes, playback and buying processes”.
The basic rhythm tracks and concepts were all improvised in February 2009 whilst Armes accompanied ‘Movement for Actors” classes at the Neighborhood Playhouse Theatre in NYC, usually playing some combination of synth, piano, and handsonic simultaneously. Working on in his home studio the artist added extra instrumentation, sounds and found voices. The detailed yet spacious results particularly reward the listener using headphones.
An early review from Dan Herman of Radio Crystal Blue reads “One comes away from the listening and absorbing of Geoffrey’s latest offering Hemisphere as though well-traveled in one’s inner world….space-age technology combined with hallway voices, handclaps, blips, bleeps, smooth and sublime bass riffs, and a palette of sound that commands attention.”
Downloads at http://www.geoffreyarmes.com/ga/cds/hemisphere/ come with pdf artwork designed by Rod Dodson, and it is possible to buy at various levels varying from individual tracks to complete collections including bonus material.
Anima 91 is available for free download at GeoffreyArmes.comBerlin Dance Works available for sale. Shift Well available as Free Download. Geoffrey has honed a musical approach that walks a knife-edge between the singer-songwriter and ambient club or world fusion approach to music making. Improvising is an important process in Geoffrey's intuitive composing style.The UK born multi-instrumentalist (guitars, keys, percussion), composer and singer- songwriter has built a career for himself in New York City on the back of six CD releases, a steady stream of work with Theatre and Modern Dance Companies, and a reputation as a stellar solo performer.Early influences included Gordon Lightfoot, Celtic harpist Allan Stivell, Ravi Shankar, and Umm Kulthum. 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 the art. He played bass in an improvising jazz/punk band whose members' credentials included the Soft Machine and Third Ear, jammed with Reebop Kwaku Baah, studied Electronic music and harmony at London's Goldsmiths College in New Cross, and assisted in building Falconer's first studio, alongside the Eurythmics.In Holland, later 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 'Jazz Noise' collectives with unlikely names such as Purity of Essence, and took part in Performance Art events in NeuKolln and Ernst-Reuter Platz.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.Interwoven with this 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?
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