åpne sinn

Boston-based composer Geoff Small is the man behind åpne sinn, an ambient and electronic music project releasing on the Relaxed Machinery label (rM). Geoff helped found rM in mid-2010 along with John Koch-Northrup and veteran ambient composer Steve Brand, and has been one of the label’s driving creative forces in its 5 year history, recruiting and working with some of the largest names in the ambient and electronic music genres.

More a music lover than a true musician, I have been composing since the early 1990’s when digital synthesis first became readily available to the general population. Thanks to on-board sequencers and samplers, I could finally start creating the music that filled my brain since childhood but had always lacked the training (and the discipline) to create. A childhood love of the classics had grown to include electronic pioneers like Isao Tomita and Jean-Michelle Jarre by the time I reached college, but it was the first exposure to the work of Brian Eno that would forever change the way I thought about music creation and sound design.

I spent most of the 90’s creating what is in retrospect some very bad New Age music, a period that ended when I gave up on music entirely and sold all my synths. The genre by that time had gone stale and I lacked both the inspiration to draw something new out of my equipment and the ability to invest in anything new. It wasn’t until 2006, when a chance browse through the (then) very new and cool iTunes music store that I stumbled across a composition that made me want to write again. That composition was ‘Immersion: One’ by Steve Roach, and it attracted me like nothing I’d ever heard before. I was fascinated by the idea that so minimal a composition could go on for well over an hour and never get stale, boring or lose its ability to enthrall. That chance connection with Immersion lead me to the much wider world of ambient music, one that I have not yet explored to its fullest extent and remain deeply fascinated with today.

Creating my own music, and thanks to relationships developed through the internet with others that shared my passion for the genre, releasing that music into the wide world is the fulfillment of a lifelong dream. In 2012, I was fortunate enough to move to a new home and build a studio in a outbuilding on the property. In it, I hope to continue to discover the depth and breadth of what contributions I can bring the ambient and electronic music world.

Relaxed Machinery Releases

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