{"id":16061,"date":"2020-03-29T18:08:26","date_gmt":"2020-03-29T17:08:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.eyeplug.net\/magazine\/?p=16061"},"modified":"2022-08-23T18:57:32","modified_gmt":"2022-08-23T17:57:32","slug":"paul-armfield-speaks-to-eyeplug","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.eyeplug.net\/magazine\/paul-armfield-speaks-to-eyeplug\/","title":{"rendered":"Paul Armfield speaks to Eyeplug"},"content":{"rendered":"
This entry is part 4 of 5 in the series DozenQ 5<\/a><\/div><\/div><\/div>

\u2018Domestic\u2019 is the recently recorded album by Paul Armfield,<\/strong> a collection of songs that pivot around the theme of \u2018home\u2019, whether this be the four walls that surround you, the country where you were born, or more pointedly, the continent of which you are a resident. Place, belonging, allegiances, and mental states are all explored with a deft and playful use of language. The musical accompaniment reflects the mature and ponderous nature of the subject matter and is performed with a beautiful lightness of touch by a trans-European cast of musicians: Italian Giulio Cantore<\/strong> on guitars and cavaquinho, Johann Polzer<\/strong> plays the drums, and his fellow German Max Braun<\/strong> plays bass as well as producing the album. The songs were recorded in Stuttgart and will be released in September 2020.<\/p>\n

 
\n01 How did you get started in the Arts and Music?<\/h3>\n

As a youngster, I displayed some talent for drawing and music, although I come from a non-artistic family my life seemed to bend in that direction of its own accord. In my early teens, I was befriended by a girl who lived nearby who was and still remains the most incredible artist (hiya elaine)<\/a> she and her artistic family opened my mind to the world of art and different ways of seeing and thinking.<\/p>\n

02 Where did your passion come from?<\/h3>\n

I\u2019d always loved music and my parents never minded me digging into their eclectic record collections and sitting for hours with the headphones on. My father\u2019s love of rock\u2019n\u2019roll, my mother\u2019s love of Sinatra and the musicals all rubbed off on me. My teenage cousins were friends with Black Sabbath, all living on the same Worcestershire farm in the mid-70s where I would spend each Saturday, and that sparked some sense of excitement, but it was as a twelve-year-old enthused by the energy of punk that I was inspired to do something. With some friends, we formed a band, got instruments, learned to play them (in that order) put on gigs and adopted the DIY attitude with gusto.<\/p>\n

03 Who are your major influences and inspirations and who do you despise?<\/h3>\n

I\u2019ve always loved a good lyric and those early Elton John records really fed that followed by the likes of Joni Mitchell, Elvis Costello and Paul Simon, writers who can deliver a phrase to make a song explode from the continuous hum of music that soundtracks our lives like a  kind of banal tinnitus Musically I constantly return to the early doo-wop of the Golden Gate Quartet, the stripped-back piano and voice of Nina Simone, early Chuck Berry, Chet Baker, Hoagy Carmichael. I am still most readily inspired by the great chansonniers, Jacques Brel, Brassens, Ferre, our own Jake Thackeray and more recently I\u2019m enjoying discovering the work of their Italian counterpart Fabrizio De Andre, I love the poetry, the delivery, the way the music follows the words, the lightness of touch on the heaviest of subjects. These days I find a lot to get me excited, lots of great younger artists diving into their folk traditions and emerging with something completely original but dripping with authenticity and heart, Anna and Elizabeth, Lisa O\u2019Neill, Alasdair Roberts, Richard Dawson et al<\/p>\n