What is Ellipsis?
el.lip.sis \i-‘lip-s*s, e-\ \-‘lip-.se-z\ n or el.lip.ses
[L, fr. Gk elleipsis ellipsis, ellipse, fr. elleipein to leave out, pl fall short, fr. en in + leipein to leave]
1a: the omission of one or more words that can be obviously understood and supplied to make a construction seem more complete (as in “the man he sees” for “the man that he sees”)
1b: a leap or sudden passage without logical connectives from one topic to another
2: marks or a mark (as … or *** or -) showing omission esp. of letters or words
Who was Ellipsis?
Ellipsis was a basement band, pretty much… (Originally Suki’s… then Sri’s… then Eric’s… then Suki’s again…) We met at the University of Maryland in the early 1990s and got together to form a consulting company, and to relax after the meetings we brought our instruments along. Eventually we all got different jobs so the company never materialized, but a band sort of appeared in its place. And then we all got new instruments.
And then Sri went to Alaska, then Massachusetts, then Washington state, then California, so we don’t play together much any more.
What did they play?
David MacKenzie: vocals, guitar, keyboards, bass
Sridhar Rao: drums, keyboards
Suki Hirata: guitar, bass, drums
Eric Poh: bass, guitar, keyboards, vocals
Keith Barteck: bass, vocals
As you can imagine after looking at the above list, figuring out who does what on any given song can be… interesting. We find that arranging songs for 5 amateurs can be pretty difficult, not to mention getting everything mixed audibly above the drums without provoking the neighbors to have us arrested, or finding times when everyone can get together all at the same time. So we often break into factions of 2-4 people instead and sidestep the question.
Everyone in the band is a Rush fan, so most of the covers we do end up being Rush songs. We’ve also tried some Smashing Pumpkins and Police stuff. Usually we get part way through the song and can’t remember the rest… thus the band’s name.
The style of our original music is sort of updated classic rock with an ambient twist… Sri describes it as “folk-thrash”… maybe “folk-Rush” would be more appropriate if we keep adding keyboards…
Recordings
Our first album was going to be called “Obscure”, for reasons that are, uh… never mind. But we never made it, just some demos and jams. We eventually compiled a 2-CD set “Jams ’97” which isn’t available anywhere.
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