Rip Van Hippy, aka Geoffrey Hales began playing music in the late sixties in Australia, travelled the hippy trails of India, Morocco in the early seventies,studying and collecting percussion, returned to australia and performed with the white company,a group of musicians actors and dancers put together to tour australia to publicize the aquarius festival in nimbin,then toured and recorded with'captain matchbox'. eventually landing in Los Angeles, working with inspirational musicians such as, Herb Alpert,victor feldman,t bone burnett,abe laboriel, lee oskar,he performed and recorded with Osama Kitajima for ten years and on various movie soundtracks such as Shogun, The Year of Living Dangerously. Toured Japan and Europe many times and played at the Monterey Jazz Festival (81) and the Technics Jazz Festival in Tokyo and Osaka (83).Returning back to Australia in the late eighties Geoffrey worked as a session percussionist for many of the top Australian recording artists,including crowded house,cruel sea,tiddas ,touring with ollie olsens'third eye'also recorded for several gus till projects and with japanese seminal art group'the boredoms'.his percussion featured on the peter weir film,'the truman show'.writing advertising jingles for Uncle Toby's, Mercedes Benz etc, while producing recording his unique style of psychedelic electronic music, first under the moniker of 'Tripitaka' with releases on Matsuri Productions (UK/Japan) and Return to the Source (uk).Geoffrey also one half of Fluro Conspiracy (Psy-Harmonics /Transient) with Ollie Olsen and has collaborated with Andrew Till & Ollie Olsen on their The Visitors project (Psy-Harmonics/Transient/Matsuri/ Return to the source) and co-wrote Psyko Disko's hit single 'Getaway' released on Flying Rhino & Psy-Harmonics. Finally with Rip Van Hippy Geoffrey began experimenting with his intensive knowledge of rhythm, sounds and composition with the release of his debut album 'Waking Up is Hard to Do!' followed by 'When Bernie was a Tree' then 'the whole worlds hip and thats not cool'gaining a strong support from the media and loyal followers from around the World. playing at events such as the Outback Eclipse Festival (Australia)liquid room[tokyo], Mt.Fuji Rock Festival (Japan), Magical Forest (Greece), Rolling Thunder (Sado Island,Japan),nagisa[tokyo]the cube[tokyo],oshino dead[japan]many earthcores and other bush partiesl (Australia).
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