All the Quiet (Part I)

“The unknown is always my favorite part of the process,” Joe Armon-Jones tells Apple Music. “When you’re making jazz, you never know where a tune is going to go next—you just have to take a risk and hope it pays off.” London-based pianist Armon-Jones has spent the past decade taking plenty of risks in the British jazz scene and reaping the rewards. A member of saxophonist Nubya Garcia’s band and frequent collaborator with singers Fatima and Greentea Peng, it’s with his Afrobeat-influenced group Ezra Collective that Armon-Jones has had his greatest success, with the band becoming the first jazz act to win the Mercury Music Prize in 2023. Now, Armon-Jones is readying the release of a double-album opus that has been in the works over the past four years while he’s been on his meteoric rise. It’s titled *All the Quiet*, and the 10 tracks of *Part I* see Armon-Jones and his longtime band sprawling out through the dub fanfares of “Lifetones” to the tight breakbeat grooves of “Nothing Noble” and the eerie reverb-laden textures of “Show Me.” “I sat with this music for a long time, experimenting with it as I learned how to use a mixing board,” he says. “The result pays tribute to dub heroes of mine like Sonia Pottinger and King Tubby who improvise on the desk like it’s another instrument. It’s pushing jazz into a whole new territory.” Read on for Armon-Jones’ in-depth thoughts on the album, track by track. **“Lifetones”** “This tune is inspired by a group I listen to a lot who are called Lifetones. They are made up of two musicians from different ends of the spectrum, combining genres like post-punk and reggae, and I was listening to their album *For a Reason* one night and wrote this tune at the same time. I wanted to create a dub feeling with the groove and the intro is a little palate cleanser to get you ready for the journey to come.” **“Forgiveness”** “All I had was the melody and bassline for this number before I took it to the band in the studio. I didn’t know how it would sound but it came out quite haunting and sorrowful. James Mollison plays one of my favorite sax solos on this track because he doesn’t show off his chops, he just gives thoughtful statements and says a lot with a little. He was making his own phrases in the moment.” **“Kingfisher” (feat. Asheber)** “‘Kingfisher’ came out of an after-hours jam session I did in Rotterdam when I was playing at the North Sea Jazz Festival. It all just happened in the moment, since we were feeling good after playing our show, and suddenly, the vocalist Asheber, who I’ve been working with for a long time, went into his memory bank of lyrics onstage at the jam and came out with this whole tune on the spot. The song was like a gift.” **“Nothing Noble”** “I don’t normally write songs that sound like this, since I started with a George Duke vibe, wanting to play a sequence that moves around different places and doesn’t get stuck. When it came to the recording, though, what came out was totally different and it began to sound like this was the soundtrack to a battle scene. When I make music, I’m always letting the tune be what it is rather than forcing it into a box.” **“Eye Swear” (feat. Goya Gumbani)** “I’ve been writing music with Goya for ages and I feel very comfortable with him. I played him this musical idea at my home studio one day and he caught a vibe on it and was away on the mic. It all happened really quickly, which is great because I don’t like the sound of people overanalyzing things, I like the sound and energy of first takes. I loved this track so much that I listened to it every day for a month after we first made it.” **“Danger Everywhere”** “I wanted to use King Tubby-style sound design here, cutting through the reverb with a step filter on the mixing desk, which was a technique he used. It’s a palate cleanser in the middle of the record—something to refresh our brains with thanks to the ambience created by running the track through the tape machine at a slower speed to hear the gaps between the notes.” **“The Citadel”** “A long time ago, when I thought I’d shorten all 20 tracks I had recorded into one album, I soon realized I wasn’t able to because I love them all—especially this one. It was mainly written on a voice note at the piano when I was home and then imagined by the band in the room at the studio. It became what it became when we started playing it, and it was really nice to have the freedom to realize it. Most of the track is me trying to catch a balance between being a player in the session while also leading the group and the arrangement.” **“Snakes”** “We don’t play to a click track as a band so we can move around the tunes freely, which is exactly what ‘Snakes’ does. It’s two sections of a tune that we played around in the studio with, shifting gear from a fast tempo into different grooves, always making sure that the whole band is moving together as one. I’m really happy with how this came out and it has one of my favorite snare drum sounds I’ve ever recorded on it.” **“Show Me”** “‘Show Me’ is actually the repurposed drums, bass and keys from a different track called ‘Another Place,’ which are then run through the tape machine with slowed speed to draw out the snare sound. I’ve never made anything like this before, since it was the result of me messing around with the tape machine and finding it amazing how malleable it is. It opened me up to lots of happy accidents.” **“Hurry up & Wait”** “If you listen to the album as a whole, all 20 tracks and two parts, this is the centerpiece that comes halfway through. It’s a track that dictated the soundworld of the record since it was an early example of me using the tape machine and mixing desk as instruments in their own right, anchoring the whole record in that dubby frame of mind. It sets the listener up for *Part II* and the energy to come.”