Ateleia

Ateleia is Brooklyn resident James Elliott. His unique electronic music combines a crystalline pulse with rich electro-acoustic drones and subtly fragmented melodies. Evoking the grand echo of My Bloody Valentine and the long standing tradition of psychedelic minimalism, but informed by contemporary electronic music, the Ateleia sound is truly hypnotizing.
PRESS:
"Half rhythmic and half beatless we're treated to dark drones, stunning manipulation and a couple of tracks that, frankly, are up there with the likes of Gas and William Basinski." - Smallfish, September 2007
"Elliott’s music is quietly, hypnotically gorgeous. Formal Sleep follows through on the debut’s textural promise, with every digital grain flooded with light, the sensual properties of these perpetually flickering micro-melodies and buried, striated rhythms recalling the bright eyelid-movie patterning of Man Ray’s Emak Bakia film, where spiralling shapes reflect light in abstruse programs." - Jon Dale, Stylus Magazine, January 2007
". [Formal Sleep] will blow your mind. This isn’t your average electronic music. beneath the cyclic beat structures and fluttering electric piano is a mire of experimental noise and expert manipulation. Those of you who enjoyed Kompakt’s Pop Ambient series of releases will no doubt be intrigued by the blend of sound on offer here – this music is deep, sincere and very carefully measured. On the closing piece ‘Bridget Riley’ Elliott’s ideas finally slide together in perfect harmony and he turns in a piece that is a testament to his vision. As the gorgeous cascading harmonies reach a satisfying close, you can be safe in the knowledge that beauty is alive and well, no matter what they keep trying to tell us. A breathtaking piece of work - a massive recommendation." - Boomkat, February 2007
"There's always a satisfying bandwidth to Ateleia's music, with its middle-range sounds, like waves, coming crested with high-end foam and deep, low-end swell. His elegantly unfolded sounds have an unmistakably tidal impulse." - Sam Davies, The Wire No. 276
"As accomplished as the debut is, the follow-up presents a more mature vision and a broader range of stylistic contrasts, with tracks ranging between contemplative soundscapes and settings so propulsive they verge on techno, albeit of an obviously abstract kind. one easily succumbs to the psychedelic pull of Formal Sleep's hallucinogenic charms." - Ron Schepper, Textura, January 2007
"Hypnotic. The careful shape of Ateleia's formalist approach recalls Laika and Spiritualized, though Elliott clearly serves a louder, more aggressive muse." - Eric Waggoner, Magnet Magazine 75
"Elliott's thrumming soundscapes approach the idea of song in a manner not unlike My Bloody Valentine's mid-song feedback deconstructions, keeping the form as suggestion while reveling in the more sensual aspects of sound. His textures are invariably rich and buzzing, filed with melodies scuffed by hard-disc imperfections and thick sheets of multihued distortion." - Joe Panzner, Grooves No. 016
"A massive record, definitely one of the more powerful experimental computer music albums I've heard in some time." - Keith Fullerton Whitman
"Elliott's gaseous compositions are austere but not forbidding, strung out but not aimless. Despite the music's bracing astringency and cerebral economy of approach, there's just enough textural warmth and serendipitous, fleeting beauty to sustain an emotional as well as an intellectual response. Quietly breathtaking." - Chris Sharp, The Wire No. 251
"Church-bell sonorities stretch impossibly, buzzing like distant hornets; insistent tones swarm like a Terry Riley mantra. Striking a middle ground between Fennesz and the austere minimalism of Dion Workman and Rosy Parlane, Elliott carves out a niche all his own." - Steve Smith, Time Out New York No. 476