Dub against Dystopia | Interview with Joe Armon-Jones

Joe Armon-Jones is thinking about the end of music. On his latest, third album as bandleader, the 32-year-old pianist is imagining a world of silence.

“The album is called All The Quiet because it’s about a world thousands of years in the future when music has been pushed out of existence,” he says. “It hasn’t been taken care of and the building on the cover of the record is its final resting place that’s about to be attacked. We’re inside playing, listening and preparing.”

The premise might seem like a sci-fi fantasy but for Armon-Jones it’s a reflection of the world we’re currently living in.

“We’re treating music like we do the environment – it’s something we don’t realise needs care and attention, so instead we consume it like it’s a throwaway commodity,” he says. “But if you took music away, it would ruin people’s lives. We need to nurture those who make music and give young people the chance to see it as a real career rather than listening to government adverts telling them to retrain out of the arts into something vocational.”

Read the interview in Jazzwise Magazine.

[This piece was published on 17/04/25]