Joe Armon-Jones - All The Quiet
Photo Credit: Joe Armon-Jones by Marco Gray
In recent weeks, there has been a wave of online commentary about a band called The Velvet Sundown, who recently appeared out of nowhere on streaming services and were recommended to a vast array of users. At the time of writing, they have amassed over 1.2 million monthly listeners on Spotify, no mean feat given the fact that their debut album landed on platforms little over a month ago.
The initial intrigue surrounding the band stemmed from a simple question. Is this AI? Since the discourse began, their identity has been partially clarified by an updated Spotify bio, which reads, “Not quite human. Not quite machine. The Velvet Sundown lives somewhere in between.”
In the images used to represent them, the four “members” appear like perfectly airbrushed participants in a modern Manson cult, think Jonathan Van Ness meets the Grateful Dead. But it is their music that appears to reveal the most about the intersection of art, technology, and commerce at which we currently find ourselves.
For those who haven’t heard it, their sound is stripped-back and passive, an amalgamation of cult favourites Khruangbin and Mazzy Star. This ambient strain of Americana seems precision-engineered for Spotify’s algorithm, background friendly, endlessly replayable and emotionally neutral. Put simply, it fits a “vibe.” Smooth FM, one-size-fits-all, designed to slot effortlessly into any playlist without the listener so much as batting an eyelid.
While many questions have been raised about the ethics of AI-generated music, to me, what this highlights more urgently is how our listening habits have turned what was once our most important cultural conduit for creative expression into little more than background noise. In many cases, music now ceases to function as art at all, and instead simply represents a soft, anaesthetising barrier between us and the outside world.
With that in mind, I wanted to find out what impact this has on the artists trying to make a living and a create an impact in today's economy?
To explore that question, we recently caught up with keyboardist, producer, songwriter, and bandleader Joe Armon-Jones to discuss his new project All The Quiet.
Across two records he imagines a dystopian future devoid of music. A vision that feels increasingly less like science fiction and more like the logical endpoint of the path we currently find ourselves on.
All The Quiet (Part 1)
“There’s so many things going on in the world, it feels weird to be sounding the alarm about music,” Joe says as we chat over video call. Yet, he’s keen to highlight the stark reality for many modern musicians in the plainest terms. “When you release an album on Spotify or any of the streaming platforms, they don’t have to buy it from you. You give it to them, and they give you what they decide you should be paid for it.”
It’s a sobering scenario, one that cuts straight to the heart of this gig economy adjacent model that music appears to have stumbled into. “When Netflix wants to put a TV show on their platform, they have to pay for it,” he continues. “But with music, they don’t.”
Buying records, once the cornerstone of the music industry, has become increasingly rare as purse strings have tightened and convenience continues to coax consumers towards more cost-efficient modes of entertainment. The result of this phenomena is that artists are now forced into ever more precarious circumstances to try and make ends meet. People such as Kate Nash have been particularly vocal on this as she faced backlash over her OnlyFans page, launched in order to support her career as a touring musician.
“It’s lovely for people to hear your music,” Joe says, “but it creates this weird fake economy where people are doing other things to make money instead. They’re doing brand deals, myself included, and the music just gives you the cool points to get those deals in the first place.”
In the UK, we often hear rhetoric about a collective pride in our musical exports, while we simultaneously undermine the infrastructure that supports it. The reality for many musicians is simple, “The things that used to make money don’t make money anymore.”
With record sales in decline and touring costs exploding, artists are now operating in uncharted waters. The shift has been quiet but seismic. “The decline of record sales is to do with the devaluation of music,” Joe explains. “It’s been devalued to the point where we think, ‘I should get that for free.’”
It’s hard to argue with him. The systematic stripping of value from the industry happened without input or consensus from the artists that fuel it. Now, they are left to navigate the consequences of these decisions while a concentrated few profit from their endeavors.
Yet, despite these challenges, Joe appears undeterred. Driven increasingly by his infectious love of the craft. In particular, for the sounds of Dub, which forms the core of his new project.
“That music is very beautiful and had a massive impact on me, just like jazz did,” he explains. “There’s something about dub... the world hasn’t really seen the full beauty of it. They’ve just had these little glimpses through Bob Marley and a few things that became world famous.”
All The Quiet (Part 2)
For the team at Some Other Time, our conversation with Joe and listening to All The Quiet on repeat for the past month has proved to be a gateway into the genre, opening our ears to a richly textured, deeply rooted world. A sound with an impressive history, shaped in large part by the late Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry and the records he created at 5 Cardiff Crescent, better known as Black Ark Studios.
In this small space on the outskirts of Kingston, Jamaica, he forged an almost unparalleled legacy. “When I build a studio, I’m building myself a church,” Perry once said. At Black Ark, he underwent a spiritual and sonic awakening that would reshape the foundations of music. Already revered as a pioneer of reggae, Perry used the studio to elevate the role of the engineer, recasting himself as a kind of sonic auteur from behind the mixing desk.
His track “Disco Devil” offered an early glimpse of what would soon become known as Dub, a remix of Max Romeo’s “Chase the Devil,” layered with The Upsetters’ “Croaking Lizard” and Perry’s own vocal ad-libs. More than the sum of its parts, the magic of “Disco Devil” came through Perry’s manipulation of space, his use of delay, reverb, and echo, techniques that would become the bedrock of the genre.
It is the legacy of Black Ark and the sonic blueprint laid down there that filters through into Joe’s solo work today, alongside the more apparent influence of jazz. In a video for Reverb, he gives a tour of his modest studio in Bromley, the space where All The Quiet came together. It’s there that you see his love for analogue recording truly come to life.
Among the gear on display is the Mu-Tron Bi-Phase, a piece of kit used by Perry decades earlier. Its presence is more than just nostalgic for Armon-Jones, it’s a homage to his idol. A continuation of a sound and a spirit that has been eroded ever since Perry burned down Black Ark in 1979. It is a recognition of the musical lineage that informs Joe’s practice, throughout his solo backcatalogue, where dub’s spatial dynamics and jazz’s improvisational ethos meet to form a world that has become entirely his own.
To record the new project, Joe assembled a trusted group of collaborators including the likes of Asheber, Greentea Peng, and Yazmin Lacey, to name just a few, who would come together to remind listeners of the magic that can emerge when artists work together in an intimate setting.
“I like recording with people I feel comfortable with,” Joe tells me. “I’m very careful about who I bring into the studio.” Since arriving in London, he has kept his circle small, working primarily with artists he has met through community groups such as Tomorrow’s Warriors, the musical incubator that Ezra Collective credited as central to their Mercury Prize-winning success in 2023. It’s through this familiarity that the record’s unique sound was cultivated.
“It’s quite a vulnerable place for people to be,” Joe explains. “So I’ve just found people who I feel really comfortable around.” There’s something timeless, almost spiritual, about his commitment to capturing the shared energy of a live recording and it remains a guiding principle. “When you can create an environment where people feel comfortable to stray away and improvise and play what they want, that tends to lead to things that are better than what I could have written.”
Across parts one and two of All The Quiet, Joe has created his most cohesive solo project to date. Here, he plays with his two great loves to create something immediate that refuses to sit neatly into any vibe based playlist. The standard of the playing is higher than ever and is buoyed further by the light touch of Joe’s production.
On this project, Joe writes, plays, produces, and has even released the record himself via his label Aquarii Records, forming an uncompromising portrait of a singular artistic vision. All The Quiet, like all the best works that came out of Black Ark Studio, represents the very best of human creativity. Music created to represent itself, not to dove-tail other artists in inoffensive unison. The record and the ethos that created it are central to the continuation of the life-affirming art that we love. Together they form a rallying cry to do our bit as consumers, otherwise the people that colour our lives will fall by the wayside, replaced by soulless entities and a deadening creative quiet.
All The Quiet (Part 1 & Part 2) is out now via Aquarii Records. Follow the link for details of Joe Armon-Jones upcoming tour.
