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Why ask for the moon when we can have the whole cosmos? Paul Ellis' response to the world is to play among the stars. His album Celestial Navigation (73:30) leads listeners on an animated journey through the many moods, atmospheres and textures recognized by the intrepid interstellar dweller. Celestial Navigation provides an assembly of eight exquisitely formed creations. An octad of tracks energized in the imagination, one must marvel at the substance and beauty of such well-crafted synthesis. Roaming the high cerebral cathedral down to unwound spacey states, in the rise and fall of bliss blessed electronic harmonies the energy of invention sustains and elevates. Light and dark tones go slow, then hold forth above a sequencer pattern pulse and New Age brain beats. This moving mental medium finds its focus in Ellis' stirring synth leads, ethereal Mellotron flutes and dramatic runs of reverberant guitar notes. With the mind settling on these sounds, it becomes easier to negotiate the internal expanse into which we are headed. To write with no self is irresponsible. To write with only self is irrelevant. Celestial Navigation was written for us, for our enrichment and restoration, by a musician most alive in the act of realizing his work - and so experiencing the very sense of freedom that this music means to express.
- Chuck van Zyl/STAR'S END 23 January 2025 |
