Kevin’s Band Featured in Sync Magazine
The four members of Ellison’s Cage have gathered for their usual Saturday midday practice session. Four guys still in their teens, occupying a 10-by-20-foot storage unit in North Little Rock just off Maumelle Boulevard. Storage unit No. 641 is fortunately climate controlled, but it still gets plenty hot, especially in July in Arkansas, so a fan stirs the air as the four members of Ellison’s Cage rehearse their tune “The Human Trade.” The quartet – Blake Ring on lead vocals and guitar, Matt Blackburn on Bass, Matt Hill on guitar, and Kevin Cooper on drums - refer to their music as “progressive indie rock,” which is to say it’s not really progressive rock at all. Certainly not Pink Floyd or The Mars Volta progressive rock.
It’s a genre that lacks definition, but here is what the band sounds like on “The Human Trade”: Hill starts the track with a melodic guitar tapping intro and the rest of the band soon surges behind him. “The Human Trade” is a little lengthier than most indie rock, lacking that punk urgency, and is a tad atmospheric in that Radiohead sort of way. But as the tune gains momentum it begins thrashing, Cooper and Blackburn locking in step, Ring cranking out power chords on his Fender Telecaster and Hill coaxing fluid leads out of his Gibson SG. The tune is a little more structured than most indie rock, less shambolic and tighter. It’s smart and muscular like progressive indie rock but just as bare bones and intense as indie rock. A hybrid sound that showcases each of the individual’s masterful talents while creating a melodic consensus.
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