Brian Ellis PLAYLIST

Brian Ellis is an multi-instrumentalist from San Diego, California. He has released several albums in the last few years under multiple monikers and is perhaps better known as lead guitarist for the progressive rock group, ASTRA.

By playing guitar, bass, drums, various synthesizers and keyboards, saxophone, trumpet, sitar, xylophone, kalimba, etc., Brian creates the illusion of a large live band jamming all together. After releasing 2 albums in 2007 for the now defunct Scottish electronic label, Benbecula Records, Brian found himself straying away from the programmed/sequenced elements and wanted to make an album where all the instruments were played live. The album was completed in early 2008 and was set to be the follow up to "The Silver Creature". Unfortunately, Benbecula decided to close it's doors at this time and the album was shelved.

"Quipu" takes Brian Ellis' jazz/fusion/funk sound from his previous solo works to the next level. The opening track "Birth" sets a deep atmosphere of delayed trumpets and saxophones with a slow beat and funky bass before exploding into an odd-timing heavy fusion workout harkening back to the days of Mahavishnu Orchestra. Whereas later tracks like "Psaw" (featuring David Hurley of Astra on drums) take on much more of a free jazz sound similar to Miles Davis "Bitches Brew" era, full of dissonance and surprising elements. The final track "Walomendem" is a 14 minute progressive rock epic hailing as a tribute to the great french band Magma.

Tracklisting:

1) Birth.
2) Canyon Star.
3) Count To Ten.
4) Funeral March.
5) Gossamer.
6) Psaw.
7) Walomendem.

"Quipu" (PS20) is released NOW through Parallax Sounds (Monday 11th April 2011) on CD and digital download with stunning artwork by Jessica Planter & Sean Painter.

The Silent Ballet website review:

"Quipu's other key inspiration is that other marginalised genre, Prog Rock, which comes to the fore on "Canyon Star", a track so proggy it even gets away with an extended keyboard solo. Again, Ellis steps th...ings up with an orchestra of electric guitars and a horn section - the result reminiscent of different eras of the Soft Machine, albeit with a much smoother organ sound. So far, so impressive. If this was a group, one would feel compelled to tip the hat at their versatility, never mind this one-man band".

The Organ's website review:
BRIAN ELLIS – Quipu (Parallax Sounds) – San Diego based multi instrumentalist, perhaps best known as lead guitarist in progressive rock outfit Astra. This is a collection of very 70's flavoured, acid drenche...d, forward moving, psychedelic instrumentals. Sounds like a large band jamming together rather than a one man studio project, when it really gets in the zone we're getting near Van Der Graaf Generator style instrumental passages, very much on their psychedelic acid side, though, and all very very retro. Long passages of relentlessly forward driving acid rock and Mahavishnu Orchestra moves - trumpets, saxophones, funky bass lines, dissonance, hints of free jazz, Xylophones, synths, meaty keyboards, Brian Ellis does it all rather well – 70's sounding jazz flavoured progressive fusion and space rock flavoured psychedelic instrumentals.

BRIAN ELLIS (ASTRA guitarist) "QUIPU" album gets an amazing review on "ToMeToTheWeatherMachine" website:

Quipu has been on the back-burner for a while. Recorded over a two-year period in '07 and '08, San Diego-based Brian Ellis was careful and considered in collecting these tracks together on a CD. Following the dissolution of his previous label, Benbecula Records, and employing a completely different approach to composition and recording (moving away from sample-based foundations and switching to a multi-tracking setup), the record has been just sitting for the past couple of years, stewing in its saucy psychedelic gravy. Simmering, bubbling slowly, awaiting the boil. Leave it to Parallax Sounds (the label that brought you TOME-absolute-favo's 2muchachos) to pick up the ball and slam-fucking-dunk this one straight into my CD player. This thing is a psych-rock-jazz-hybrid-monster-opus-masterpiece. Totally spaced-out, gnarly, aggressive, brooding, building, exploding... Ellis makes music that's fun for us: totally easy to slap as many descriptors as possible onto, but evading the English language just enough to keep our readers guessing. Impossible to nail down entirely, here's what I can muster from this thing, and I only hope you'll guess good enough to realize you want a copy for yourself.

Ellis is indeed talented and certainly has a knack for all things psych. He plays almost every instrument on the album, which is what is probably the most impressive thing about the recording, considering the album is full of horns, synths, percussion instruments, and some fantastic guitar and bass playing. But he's not a genius at all the instruments. His best work (as previously alluded to) is on the guitar, which is something he completely slays throughout the album - wringing its neck, violently yanking its hairs, twisting its knobs and making it beg for mercy, the instrument sobbing, wailing, and screaming, constantly shrouded in fuzzy, warbly effects. He's also a talented synth artist, squeezing pitches, bending them, and mesmerizing with some hypnotic looping patterns. Add to that, Ellis is a pretty decent drummer, pounding out odd-time signatures, slashing away at crunchy hi-hats and outlining forms for the instruments to connect with unisons between drawn-out moments of modal meditations for noodling improvisations to swirl around above. These elements all come together very nicely on the album's first half, exhibiting Ellis as a veritable swiss-army knife of fusion jazz. The chops on these various instruments holds these tunes back ever-so-slightly, though, as some tunes like "Funeral March" tend to march along rather slowly and a bit un-eventfully. If you were expecting something like Miles Davis, Return to Forever, or Mahavishnu, you wouldn't be far off, but don't expect something as seasoned as 10, 20, 30 years of experience with acid, heroin, and good-old-fashioned weed, not to mention years of professional schooling or thousands of hours of practice behind Chick Corea, Billy Cobham, Joe Zawinul, Eddie Gomez, or any of those ridiculos. Though these musicians appear as Godly apparitions throughout the album, Brian Ellis is certainly not these people. However, only three albums into his solo career (Ellis is also the guitarist of Astra), he is a young musician, and has done an admirable job. Hence, the future for this guy is about as bright as they come.

Now then, the album's second half is where things really start to get interesting. Ellis brought on a fellow named David Hurley to lay down drums for these tunes, and the difference is stunning. With light pitter-pattering cymbals around polyrhythmic experimentations a-la Tony Williams, and heavy-as-Hell, absolutely dizzying Bill Ward-style explosion fills, Hurley takes Ellis' vision to a completely different level. Look no further than the album's last, the unbelievably intense track "Walomendem" for your real fix. This track has it all—soli-sectioned refrains, driving rhythms, confusing harmonics, and more of those sickening guitar licks filling out the song's 14+ minute run-time. No doubt, one of the best pieces of music I've heard so far this year.

Ultimately though, it's just great to hear an artist pick up the jazz-fusion pieces left floundering in the 80s & breathing new life into an older notion of what psychedelia and precision can achieve together on a grander scale. Ellis has constructed something smart with Quipu, taking accessibility cues of 70s worldly psych (the Pink Floyds, the Cans, the King Crimsons), and smashing them head-first into fusion jazz's mathmatic approach to rhythm and harmony to produce something that looks ever-backwards while also peering intently ahead, holy futuristic and forward-thinking as some of the most experimental of electronic music today, much in the same way bands like Tjutjuna have recently illustrated. At least on-the-level with these guys, Ellis points with a very fat long finger to this return-to-psych style as a veritable movement, one I'm more than happy and willing to dive in and float along with.

BRIAN ELLIS-QUIPU album review on Freqzine website. For fans of: Sun Ra Arkestra & Acid Mothers Temple:

Brian Ellis is the guitar player with the band Astra, whose album The Weirding was one of the best of a batch of progressive rock revival albums released last year. It swept majestically over musical fields covered by Yes, early Genesis and King Crimson. On what appears to be his sixth solo release, Quipu, Ellis touches upon and expands on all these elements to make an interesting album. About halfway through the track changes into a heavy metal take on a Magma workout, guitars power ahead and wrestle with rhythm in a hard edge Christian Vander-style percussive bleed that sets the tone for the album

"Birth" starts off in a jazzy ambient style mode that strays onto territory covered by Rain Tree Crow's set of improvisational pieces that made up their sole album. Horns squelch away over Bruford-esque drum patterns while keyboards pad out layers of sound beneath. About halfway through the track changes into a heavy metal take on a Magma workout, guitars power ahead and wrestle with rhythm in a hard edge Christian Vander-style percussive bleed that sets the tone for the album. "Canyon Star" has melodic symphonic guitar that touches upon certain tonal passages of Steve Howe's work on "The Remembering" from Tales From Topographic Oceans. Here Ellis seems to play the "Relayer" chorus over the top of an interesting keyboard passage before the song breaks down into a jaunty Van der Graaf Generator sax and guitar battle for its final half. After a fairly ambient opening "Count To Ten" becomes a far more standard blues/jazz piece that takes onboard Bitches Brew-era Miles Davis atonal keyboard pulses while the guitar soars and sax heads off with a vigorous screeching solo before bringing the track back down to earth for its ending. "Funeral March" begins with a considered riff that tracks the guitar and organ to a slow build up before the sax takes over the melody and the guitar is left to fill the space. The track plays over this riff until it seems to fall away exhausted, and this was the first time I started to question what Ellis was trying to say with these instrumental pieces as I felt here that this sounded somewhat laboured compared to the preceding tracks.

"Gossamer" begins with sloppy laid-back jazz drum rhythm that slides into a Mahavishnu Orchestra section before swirling synths and straight-ahead guitar clatter into a section that sounds somewhat like early Hawkwind holding back. This odd amalgam works in the track's favour, especially during the closing segment that drifts like a cosmic wind to its fade out. "Psaw" has psychedelic guitar playing over late sixties free jazz elements that wouldn't seem out of place on a Sun Ra Arkestra album of this era. The music sounds largely improvised and is probably closer in tone to some of Acid Mothers Temple's work rather than, say, Miles Davis. Deep bass synth introduces "Walomendem" and a lead synth ramble's a half forgotten melody before the track packs its Magma punch. Klaus Blasquiz-style vocalising resonates over Jannick Top bass booms while piano plays atonal scattering around over its downward riff. This track could have easily been an extra track on Mekanik Destruktiw Kommandoh – it is Ellis doing a homage to Magma, plain and simple as that. This is not deriding the piece in anyway as it certainly packs a punch and gives a genuine ferocity some of the other tracks lackas it certainly packs a punch and gives a genuine ferocity. What Ellis has created here is a hybrid prog meets free jazz album that sits at times uncomfortably on the fence. It works best when it steams full a head in its Magma-style vein as its passion and power then comes to the fore. It just feels, at times, though like it staggers drunkenly into areas it seems unsure of and then backs away. Its triumphant last track shows where maybe some of the rest of the album could have touched more which would have made the whole thing a tour-de-force. Ellis has made a brave record and doing so he may well have alienated some of his listeners before they can swallow the album as whole and appreciate the varied vistas he has painted with his broad brush. It's certainly well worth a listen even if you only venture as far as "Walomendem's" firey brilliance. -Gary Parsons.