Artists

Make A Rising - Infinite Ellipse...

1. Sneffels Yokul
2. All One or None
3. Peaceful Paths
4. Woodsong Part One
5. Bradford’s Big Boatride [Beyond (The Dawn)]
6. [download#3#nohits] [download#3#image]
7. Your Karmic Obstacle
8. Look, I’m Almost Dead
9. How’s ‘Bout a Love Supreme
10. Woodsong Part Two

All Songs by Make A Rising

Justin Moynihan: piano, keyboards, voice, saxaflute, accordion
John Heron: percussion
Brandon Beaver: guitar, voice
John Pettit: bass, trumpet
Jesse Moynihan: guitar, violin, voice
Andrew Ciccone: clarinet, bass clarinet

with:
Margie Wienk – cello
Evan Lipson – doublebass
Dan Scofield – saxophone
Mike Dur – trombone
Ashley Deekus – marimba
Salihah Moore – flute
Lisa Stuempfig – vocals
Kelly Kietzman – vocals
Mary Halvorson – vocals
Eliza Hardy – vocals
Sharif Abdulmalik – vocals
Brendan Cooney – vocals
Ben Leavitt – vocals

Recorded by Make A Rising with Bill Moriarty, Edan Cohen, Andrew Gilligan, and Tom Nichols.
Mixed by Colin Marston
Mastered by Alan Douches

Photos by Ryan Collerd

Philadelphia’s Make A Rising is back: bigger and better than ever. Expanded to a sextet for its second album, Infinite Ellipse and Head with Open Fontanel, Make A Rising has realized its potential.

After laudatory press for the 2005 debut Rip Through the Hawk Black Night, Make A Rising hunkered down and began working on an intricate, elaborate follow-up. Holographic in nature and transpersonal in effect, Make A Rising is a band that composes unlike any other. While most
experimental bands reside either completely inside or totally outside traditional pop song forms. Make A Rising writes its own rules. The result is excitingly original and marvelous amalgam of genres and influences, layered with spontaneity and energy. We wouldn’t say it, if
we didn’t mean it: Absolute masterpiece.

While the band’s debut earned Make A Rising plenty of fans and admirers across the country, Infinite Ellipse finds the band have refined and expanded its unique style. While Rip Through showed a inventive band full of ideas, Infinite Ellipse showcases a band that has coalesced its ideas and has painstakingly perfected its elaborate and necessarily complex recording process.

Make A Rising formed in 2003 out of the ashes a few other projects (the band was originally known as New Planet Make A Rising). Ambitious from the beginning, Make A Rising resolved early on to have an ever-evolving sound. Although there are certain reference points that people hear in the music, the band has never been limited itself into a specific genre. The concept of the band is that of MAR as a “composition” group.

The band writes music slightly out of its own comfort zone, so as the band has evolved, they have had to change the way they write.

Like its predecessor, Infinite Ellipse‘s tracks vary not only from each other, but have numerous various parts in each song. Very rarely is anything straightforward or obviously sequential.

Although all the members contribute to the songwriting process, brothers Justin and Jesse Moynihan are the main writers in the group.

Infinite Ellipse and Head With Open Fontanel features contributions by members of Normal Love, Fern Knight, and Shot × Shot.

The last three years has seen Make A Rising sharing the stage with artists such as Dr. Dog, Dirty Projectors, Lightning Bolt, Man Man, Uz Jsme Doma, Pattern is Movement, Gang Gang Dance, Neil Hamburger, as well as two South by Southwest appearances (2006 and 2008) and headlining the opening night of the Popped! Philadelphia festival.

Reviews

NPR’s All Songs Considered
{Apr 8, 2008, Bob Boilen}
“[I was] pleasantly knocked out. What a rollicking, theatrical ride.”

Philadelphia Weekly
{Mar 26, 2008, Doug Wallen}
“The West Philly troupe may employ homemade props and costumes, cycle through drastic mood swings in record time, and reach for the stars with their swooning, orchestral racket, but it’s all done with immense affection and an eerie attention to detail.
Skeptical? Pick up their new album Infinite Ellipse and Head With Open Fontanel, and slap on a pair of headphones. See what I mean? Insane though it is, the album gels better and more quickly than their previous effort—2005’s Pitchfork-lauded Rip Through the Hawk Black Night—and is as notable for its sense of control as for its careening energy. That said, if you thought Man Man were the most puckish live band in the town, you haven’t seen Make a Rising.

Philadelphia City Paper
{Mar 27, 2008, MJ Fine}
“Careful what you wish for. If you listen to Make a Rising’s second album, Infinite Ellipse and Head with Open Fontanel (High Two), hoping the avant gentlemen will obliterate your brain, you might not be prepared for how they achieve the desired effect. Rather than fill every space with noise, they overwhelm and then pull back, leaving you alone with the thoughts you were trying to escape in the first place.”

Prog Archives

{Apr 2008, Assaf Vestin}

“…I feel I haven’t done justice to this wonderful album in my review. If at all I feel I’ve diminished their achievement with my mumblings. This is a fabulous album, one that is already on the top of my favourite albums for this year and is quickly becoming a personal favourite, regardless of year.
More than just four stars.”

Prefix
{Apr 24, 2008, Jim Allen}
8.5 out of 10
“Make a Rising makes challenging music, but the ample rewards easily outway any demands.”

Dream Magazine
{#9, Summer 2008}
Manic cartoon pop ala XTC in a funhouse hall of mirrors shape-shifting themselves into a psychedelic infinity of possible permutations, then slow disintegrating ice crystal snowflakes by piano and birdcall like high woozy Smile outtakes. Almost a Randy Newman melody married to a harmonized heroic prog-rock march that ultimately blooms into a holy lost Flaming Lips prayer. Elsewhere they bring to mind Akron/Family, Charles Ives, the Beach Boys, Mr. Bungle, King Crimson, Moondog, Spirit, and others. Quite sublime and certainly one of the best albums of 2008.