Ayro-maniac
Jeremy Ellis sets Detroit, and the world, on fire.
By Peter Nicholson
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."
As usual, Ellis is aiming
high. Ayro performs with DJs Hakobo, Disko, and Tokyo
Component Fri/5, 9 p.m., Milk, 1840 Haight, S.F. $10. (415) 387-6455.
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