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After being introduced to harDCore at the tender young age of 13, Elizabeth Sharp started playing drums. By the time she was in college, she was a full-fledged multi-instrumentalist, playing drums, bass, guitar, piano, xylophone, keyboard, shaker, tambourine, and sometimes car horn.
Ill Ease was initially a recording project, born sometime around 1998, when an old 8-track, a haunted piano and a guitar amp with no off-switch for the vibrato were left in an abandoned auto shop in Brooklyn.
For several years after that, e sharp continued recording pop songs with fiendish instrumentation and recorded several albums in unusual locales—such as 2001's Live at the Holiday Sin, which was recorded at a hotel room in Atlantic City.
In 2005, Ill Ease took her one-woman band show on the road and began several national and international tours across the US, Canada, continental Europe and the UK!
To find out more about ill ease and the woman behind the one-woman band, check out some of the interviews below!
Or, check out some of the music and videos!!
ill ease :: about :: interviews
New York Time Out
Today's
technology may allow fledgling musicians to create professional-quality
recordings in their bedrooms, but many people still prefer the fuzzy,
hand-tooled quality of music made with lower-end equipment. Few
recent artists have proven this more arrestingly than Ill Ease.... more
Chicago Tribune
There's a quasi-myth floating around Elizabeth Sharp, a.k.a. Ill Ease, that the New York-based one-woman band has a neurological disorder that causes the creation of music to send abnormal pleasure signals to her brain.... more
Philadelphia City Paper
Party jams, like parties, tend to oversell the good times and ignore
the consequences. Big beats and inane lyrics promise glamorous indulgence,
but most song-writers shy away from the inevitable purge. Not Elizabeth
Sharp.... more
Tape Op Recording Journal
Elizabeth Sharp records twisted bits of rhythm and melody
under the name Ill Ease. She has developed her wiry, off-kilter tunes into something lethal and infectious. I talked with her about recording, songwriting and her need to continually challenge her routine.... more
Magnet Music Magazine
Ill Ease has such a repetitive, dizzy feel to her music that its assumed she uses samples and loops. Not true. Though Sharp's sound has been likened to dub remixes of the Stones—not an entirely inaccurate description—it's neither dub nor remixes.... more
Venus
Elizabeth Sharp is a real sickie. She claims to suffer from a neurological disorder in which the right sort of aural input stimulates an endorphin rush to the pleasure centers of her brain. The result: dope records.... more
Ghettoblaster
If you're looking for some ill rhythms and hypnotizing lyrics, we've found your girl. Her name is Elizabeth Sharp, or just Sharp—but most people know her as Ill Ease. Seriously dedicated to her craft, she has been making mind-bending music since the youthful age of 13.... more
Careless Talk Costs Lives
I heard Ill Ease's second album "Circle Line Tours" in 1999 and was
infatuated. I Heard Ill Ease's third album "Live at the Holiday
Sin" this year and with lyrics like "industry whores go straight
to hell" alongside "doo be boo bop" choruses, I was
in love.... more
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