THE BEGINNING OF DIGITAL ACTIVITY
After years of writing nothing but popular songs, Geoff spent a lot of time in the studio searching for something new to sink his teeth into. He experimented with alternate ways to manipulate his tools, but at first everything he recorded sounded too familiar and similar to other instrumental approaches.
Still he thrived on the creative freedom that the early inklings of Rock Ambient music that he was messing with, provided. They allowed him to stretch his musical muscles into brand new territory, using themes, textures, sounds and elements not traditionally found in popular songwriting.
The results of these Rock Ambient experiments became DIGITAL ACTIVITY. Each DA track is an adventure to a different musical locale - compositions that usually start from a point of familiarity before drifting off-course on a short sonic adventure before falling back in line to close out the track.
Rock Ambient Music became DIGITAL ACTIVITY's playground - instrumental music that is not just the sound of waves on the shore, wind in the trees or 'Music for Airports.' Neither is it electronic beeps and buzzes with sweeping filters and Roland 606s. There is an interesting mix of texture and concept to Rock Ambient with ebb and flow, twists and turns, from hard to soft and frantic to soothing, all in one piece of music. In most cases there is a melody or theme that holds each piece together
By adding RAM's singular ingredients - a backbeat and rock guitars - it creates more edge and punch, extreme dynamics, and more complicated orchestration than traditional ambient music. It is both background music to energize your environment, enhance your state of mind and arouse your subconscious and - yeah - you CAN bring it to the foreground and crank it up for a quick dance break.
THE ROCK AMBIENT PROCESS
"I'm not concerned about combining the unexpected or concern myself with butting melody against dissonance. I use whatever bridge works best to connect the storyline and keep the piece moving," Geoff explains.
"In short, when a variation on a theme or even a new idea emerged while working on a song, I'd normally erase it or set it aside to be worked on later as a separate composition. A lot of times these alternate ideas had strong melodies - sometimes they rocked and sometimes they were mellow - but they weren't complete, they weren't enough. I began to save these snippets and before long I had a collection of short, interesting pieces. I decided to link them together in a sort of digital blender to see what would come out the other end.
"What resulted were musical journeys or soundscapes. They seemed very ambient in concept as they had no real pop structure. They just sort of rambled on, connected through dynamics and arrangement. We were excited by what we heard coming out of the speakers and DIGITAL ACTIVITY was off and running.
A FEW LAST WORDS
"Remember - this is Rock Ambient NOT Ambient Rock. There is a difference. This is not the ambient music you would normally expect. RAM was created as either a background soundtrack to enhance your environment or a foreground aural assault to freak to.
"I know there will be some tough critics out there who will say I'm delusional. But there will be that one person who 'gets' what I'm doing and that will be the starting point."?
— GW
