[Dynagroove] AYRO- artist profile
Jonra XXX
designforms at hotmail.com
Thu Nov 13 13:17:50 PST 2003
Jermey Ellis aka AYRO
founder of OMOA music out of the city know for it's inovation DETROIT,
here's some background on this cat....................................
I FIRST GOT hip to Ayro on Off Limits 3, a CD from Germany's Sonar Kollektiv
label that was compiled by DJ Dixon certainly not the first time an
American journalist has "discovered" Detroit talent thanks to a European DJ.
Past the Jazzanova and Ursula Rucker tracks lay "Let This," Jeremy Ellis's
first song recorded as Ayro.
Patiently taking its time, "Let This" builds from uplifting, gospel-flavored
vocals into a drawn-out bridge of swirling techno-tinged keys and
drum-machine claps before it hits a massive funk breakdown that rivals
Parliament at its prime. In the space of six minutes, Ellis manages to
channel the rich musical history of Detroit and forge his own sound, one
that is at once full of the future and timeless. The song stopped me dead in
my tracks and sent me in search of more from Mr. Ellis.
It's been a twisted trail. It was easy enough to find "Let This" again the
track ended up being licensed to half a dozen compilations, including one
from Gilles Peterson. But after getting my fill of Ayro's completely mental
remix of Jazzanova's "Days to Come" (Compost) and a stellar collaboration
with his then-roommate John Arnold for Arnold's "We're Not" Ubiquity single,
getting my Ayro fix became difficult, even though his work has been a
fixture on the playlists of forward-thinking DJs ranging from Budapest's
Crate Soul Brothers to Toronto's MilkAudio. "Think Twice," a standout track
from this spring's Detroit Experiment album (Ropeadope), featured a snatch
of his solid Fender Rhodes work, and I managed to weasel the Ayro album
sampler from his label, Omoamusic, which confirmed that "Let This" wasn't
just a lucky fluke that happened to catch the fancy of DJs around the globe.
The sampler's five tracks run from the banging funk of "Drink" to the
rolling soul of "Burning Brightly," always keeping Ellis's tenor croon front
and center, where it's easy to sink into his love-story lyrics. Despite the
intricate, broken beats, Ellis's firm grasp of melody and structure keeps
the music song based, rather than simply dance-floor oriented.
But as it turns out, his full-length, Electroniclovefunk, due out this
month, was not to be had, even though it had apparently been finished for a
minute. The always present specter of "distribution problems" had raised its
ugly head, and Omoa was holding tight to what it knew was the real deal.
"It's their first [full-length] release on the label, so they're really
taking their time and doing it right," Ellis says somewhat diplomatically
over the phone from Detroit. He originally got involved with Omoa through
Matt Chicoine, a.k.a. Recloose (Planet E, !K7), who he had in turn met
through Arnold, who recruited Ellis for his own band, Jazzhead.
Instrumental in Detroit
To call the Detroit scene incestuous might be an overstatement, but there
definitely is plenty of cross-fertilization going on.
Ellis is used to musical cohabitation and collaboration. Always surrounded
by musicians, he started piano lessons at age five and continued classical
lessons through high school while performing in musicals and choirs directed
by his father. "Jazzhead was how I started to meet all the DJs, and since I
was a keyboard player, they asked me to play on their tracks." The DJs Ellis
casually refers to are iconic figures like Alton Miller, Mike "Agent X"
Clark, and Carl Craig icons of the area's scene.
In a genre dominated by DJs, Ellis stands out as a remarkably talented
multi-instrumentalist. At Milk this week he won't be doing the usual
producer appearance consisting of a DJ set highlighting his own records
he'll be rocking it live. "I'm going to bring an MPC 2000 XL [sampler-drum
machine] and a Waldorf Micro Q keyboard ... and I just freestyle," he says.
Ellis's version of freestyling includes rocking each machine in succession
to build the basic tracks and then to improvise over the top, before mixing
the rhythms and moving on to the next song. Plus he adds his trademark
soulful vocals live, of course to some tracks on the fly. Sounds like a
recipe for manic disaster, but Ellis's sets at the Detroit Electronic Music
Festival and this year's Movement have helped build a strong reputation for
his live shows.
Confidence man
Ellis's steady rise through the ranks and his frequent collaborations with
innovative musicians who not only define the Detroit sound but also
electronic music in general have given him a supremely confident air, yet he
is anything but jaded. In fact, he positively bubbles with enthusiasm when
describing his plans for a side project to accompany his next album, which
will focus on collaborations with Detroit musicians.
"The story is going to be how we can clean up Detroit, which is the world's
most dirty city," he says. "I'm gonna involve all these people, and we're
going to actually dig in the dirt ... in abandoned lots [by] where I live,
and for every song I want to create a different plot of plants. So it's a
real, physical collaboration between the artists and the city."
When I ask Ellis if his cohorts will be down for gardening or think he's
completely lost the plot, he admits there may be a bit of both reactions.
"But in a way it's me calling everyone out, because everybody sits around
and talks about 'Yeah, we're going to make it better!' but then it's like,
glub-glub-glub," Ellis says, doing an uncanny imitation of a bong hit. "My
main motivation right now is the intertwining of politics and environment
and the cleanup of the wasteland that we have to live in."
Do not miss his first LA apperance along with TITONTON DUVANTE & JONRA
@ the DESIGNFORMS 2 YEAR ANNIVERSARY (323)960-4330
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