Loner

“In a world and city that can take as much as it gives, ambient music is a rare opportunity to float. it’s both sides of the mirror. The detail and the surround. Lightworks’ I think of as stripped piano chords sent through the gentle hum of a street light” 

The great-nephew of seven organ-playing sisters, Loner / aka Geoff Smith has inherited a gift for playing keyboards and developed his gift into music that transports and transcends the everyday.

In his earlier days, Loner would work only in solitude, earning him the hermitic title. However, the oxymoronic Loner has now written and performed with such artists as Dot Allison, Bomb the Bass, The Rakes, Sinead O Connor and Primal Scream. He creates music to watch the world by. He knows all about standing still, about listening, about putting the brakes on.  It’s what he’s all about. With his haunting compositional skills, he embraces the dark side of life.  

Based in his studio in Clapton Hill his work has a sombre sobriety that paradoxically emits a fierce fantasist expressionism that must lie deep within his soul. A classical pianist since the age of 8 and tutored in New Orleans piano techniques in his teens, piano understandably makes up the backbone of his work. Yet electronic interference, fuzzy glitches, Binatone samples underpin the organic qualities of piano and sometimes acoustic guitar.  

“I take my musical cues from the constant stream of new faces, stories and the sense of life moving on around me. I’m in the middle standing still, watching and staying in one place.”

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