RS: Let's talk about LiV, the project that you have coming from Ultra which is you, another guy and a girl working together on a whole electronica project.
Ellis: LiV is myself, Natasha Tabandera and Jody den Broeder, and the three of us together are LiV. It originally started out being L I V as an acronym, which is Life In Intense Volume. Then people saw the letters together and it became Liv, which is cool. Basically Jody and I met about two and a half years ago when I went out to work with Thunderpuss. He got stuck showing me around one day, because when I got there they were really busy. He had the idea that I wasn't there to see the Hollywood sign and said let's do a jam session. We hung out and worked on different ideas. He had a track, we started writing and he had these great ideas and I had these great ideas, and we wrote what then became Journey of Love. So we really liked it but we knew it was very different than what we normally do, and so we started looking for an artist to kind of cover it. Then we just kept on writing and we started collecting this body of work that was all in the same kind of vein, different tempos but closer to a singer-songwriter with an electronica pallet to it than like most dance music. Everybody kept saying the same thing like wow, the song itself kind of reminds me of like Everything But The Girl, not the production but the song, or it kind of reminds me of a Sade or Sheyl Crow record. We realized what we were creating and wanted to continue to create and we decided to become a band. Initially I would do the vocal but the more we thought about it, we realized it would be better to have another flavor in the pot, and we looked for singers. Initially, it was going to be like a C&C Music Factory, where we were doing the music and singer that showed up and these were the songs and this is what you do and play along kind of thing. We looked for a long time and eventually met Natasha. When she came in, not only was she like a great singer but there was a vibe and she had written some of her own songs that fit what we were doing and our sensibilities gelled. We found ourselves spending like a lot of time in the studio together, the three of us working and the chemistry was just right. The three of us liked each other in that way, and it just really became something special. That's how we kind of came together, and Natasha was going back and forth and I was going back and forth, and meeting out in LA. Then we had a great bidding war and had different record companies vying for it and that was completely unexpected because we actually weren't ready to shop our record at that point. The plan was that I was going to move to LA to be with Jodie and Natasha, and we were actually going to work on a whole album and then try and shop it.
RS: And so LiV is coming out with a full album project on Ultra?
Ellis: That's correct. I can't tell you the title of that yet because we're still sorting that out. We're going to be, basically Jody and I have a couple of projects that we're working on and I'm finishing up things with Orange Factory. We are working with an artist named Thara Prashad that we're in the process of signing to an urban label. We have a new Dolce single coming out and a couple of other little things here or there. Then Jodie and myself did some work with Suzanne Palmer as I also did with Orange Factory. We're currently rehearsing our show for the first single, and over the holidays and probably early part of Spring we're cutting songs for the album. Then I guess somewhere probably after the first of the year, we'll have a better idea of what we're looking at as a release date for the album. The first single, "Journey of Love" is in stores now and we're currently on the Ultra Dance 4 compilation.
RS: Very cool. OK, so let's also get this clear, Orange Factory is you and??
Ellis: Orange Factory is three members, it is Jeremy Skaller, Robert Larow and myself. But I am at this point doing a guest star appearance.
RS: Transitioning?
Ellis: Yes and I will continue to work with Jeremy and Robert, but things are all new and changing and there are lots of new things on the horizon for everybody involved.
RS: You also did some work on the Kristine W album. What songs did you work on?
Ellis: As a writer, Bitter Sweet was something that I came to the table with as a writer, and then Orange Factory in its many different forms worked on Letting Go and Save My Soul, but a couple of other people have worked on that also. So I'm not actually sure what ended up making it to fruition, and Jeremy himself tracked a lot of the vocals for other production teams on that album.
