The Elison story should start with a fulfilled desire to play the saxophone at school, but instead starts with a short-lived stint as the chief and only bassoon player in the school orchestra. This led to a lengthy hiatus from music until school was left behind once and for all, although the faintly happy memories of a few lead singing parts in disappointing school shows had a career as a bed and bath crooner almost all but guaranteed. The necessary four guitar chords were learnt and the singing began. The lack of any real talent at this point meant it should have remained a private past time, but the surprising volume put out by this once bass blowing chest caught the attention of a few distant neighbours and their anger suggested at least one thing. The voice was strong.

The Elison story does start with recording artist and singer/songwriter Matt Brown applying to the college run record label Incubator Records in 2004 and getting accepted onto their roster. They set about working on the artist and promptly told him his name was rubbish! Matt was somewhat put out by this as his Mother had given him that name, but when she learnt of the issue she came up with Elison and rest is history. A history we'll try to summarise here as it's two decades later and Elison is still here and has just released his fifth studio album.

The Incubator Records release Rambunctious Outburst sank without trace and Matt moved on to a series of originals bands putting his musicianship and writing abilities to good use in those. There were two more signings with the bands Sideways Glance and Mr Bones and the Dreamers that coincided nicely with Matt working as a DJ at Birmingham nightclub Snobs under the name Elison, but after a while such a lifestyle can take its toll and in 2013 Matt left DJing and started a new life as a professional photographer operating as Matthew Brown Photography. Again, this coincided with Matt meeting his future wife and during this transition he started writing and recording his own songs once again.

This saw Elison releasing three albums in four years, 2014's A Familiar View, 2015's A Week of Aborted Bike Rides and Broken Pac-Man and 2018's Infinite Elison. Then, due somewhat to the better performance of singles on Spotify, he started releasing semi regular singles and has had a solid run of releases from 2019, starting with his anti Brexit song Jammy Dodgers and still going strong today. These singles have started to receive great support from Matt's local BBC station and his most recent song The Moment I Saw Her has had Elison played on national radio for the first time by being broadcast on 6 Music by Tom Robinson. He also took part in their Collaborator Generator, meeting Meg Scane live on air with the two of them writing and recording The Devil in just one week.

The lockdown saw Elison bring back some old songs from his band time that didn't get released and Shards of My Past was released on the day his daughter was born by complete chance in 2020. The lockdown saw another change for Matt as he joined, almost by chance as he didn't expect it to be so successful, the Fleetwood Mac tribute band Run in the Shadow. This had a marked effect as suddenly Matt was having to play professional shows around the country while completely dissecting the music and behaviour of Lindsey Buckingham, whom he was mimicking. This resulted in a marked improvement in guitar playing, singing and songwriting to the extent that he knew he needed to produce a new proper full length studio album to take advantage of it.

Matt decided to really look at what was wrong with previous releases now that he felt the performance aspect had seen such gains and determined his previous shoe string budget home recordings were just not cutting the mustard in the current marketplace. He wasn't able to justify a large enough budget to get it professionally recorded and his production method has always served as part of the writing process, so he had to continue to do it himself. As such, Matt decided to build a studio and kit it out with all new recording equipment to get the sound for his latest album to be perfect. Please give Turning Sleeping into Art a listen to see whether he has in fact succeeded!

2024 started with the release of Could You Believe? being released from Turning Sleeping into Art and giving the album a nice boost in plays with the total now sitting at nearly 360,000 streams on Spotify. Talking of streams, August saw Elison break the previous performance record for a single by reaching over 10,000 streams in one week and over 50,000 in the first month with his latest single On the Spectrum. It is a very personal song and one that seems to have gained some fans and interest, so head over to its page to read all about it and of course have a listen.