| Artist: Paul Ellis Album: Silent Conversations Released: May 2005 | 
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Paul Ellis understands that his purpose as an artist is to envision and communicate. His album Silent Conversations (76'30"), like its author, is a complicated treasure. The nine tracks display Ellis' impeccable sonic sense and an incredible facility with his instruments. The building momentum of the rhythmic sections resolve into big-sounding, fast moving tributes to sheer synthesizer power, while the title track is tender and more poetic, and offers a beautiful space for reflection. Operating beyond mere brainy acrobatics, Ellis shapes each movement with loving care. His concentric circles of sequencer patterns exhibit an irreducible complexity, all parts are necessary for the work to function. The rhythmic cross currents of these interlocking beats are artfully woven, not from the tick of a clock, but from the beat of a heart. Ellis commands a striking range of electronic color and texture. From the brittle sounds of vintage Mellotron flutes and the vibrato of classic Rhodes piano, to innovative synth modulations and stretched acoustic samples, to the icy peels of synth strings and pieces of melody tossed back and forth, Silent Conversations is an episodic travelogue through the advanced magic of Ellis' animated musical imagination.
- Chuck van Zyl/STAR'S END 18 August 2005 | |
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