ESCONDIDO SESSIONS

Brian Ellis came to my attention through his band ASTRA but most recently with that band folding he and Conor Riley have a new band called BIRTH. Brian has many solo albums but this is the first under the name BRIAN ELLIS GROUP. His "Quipu" record from 2011 is a masterpiece of Jazz/Fusion mixed with psychedelia and closes with a Zeuhl number, it is awesome! He is a music fan like us and an incredible multi-instrumentalist. And yes a Producer and a wizard in the studio. Electric piano is his instrument of choice here with synths and organ added at times.

The "Escondido Sessions" involve three drummers with one I'm not familiar with but we also get Hurley from ASTRA and Marrone from BIRTH as well as Mast playing bass from BIRTH and the wild card Shiroishi from CORIMA on sax. I was interested to see what Ellis would come up with here and he's gone down that rabbit hole called Free Jazz and I make no bones over the fact I just am not into this style. To over simplify it, it's Jazz music with a horn player wailing over top in a relentless and often dissonant manner right Pharoah Sanders? So the CORIMA guy does that throughout here but this guy is sure talented offering up some really cool sounds that had me shaking my head. It just gets annoying after a while when there's little in the way of melody.

My favourite part of listening to this 35 plus minute album is the drumming. Flat out so good, the purposed style and with Miles coming to mind right away on the opener with the electric piano with reverb and sparse bass and sax not trumpet here but yeah "Bitches Brew" with the atmosphere as it takes it's sweet time. So much of the time the music sounds distant but if not for the sax domination I'm going 5 stars for the musicianship alone. Just my tastes of course but this is a 4 star album and one of the very few in this style that I appreciate like this.

Brian Ellis has done it again and he's on the El Paraiso label here so mastered by Jonas Munk and art work by Jakob Skott but produced and recorded by Brian Ellis. Another very impressive work by Mr. Ellis.