Jules Ellis has been a quiet but distinctive presence in Dancing Turtle’s world for some time — as a member of Paradise Found and as one half of Elpoep, the duo whose work sits at an unhurried intersection of electronic production, ambient texture and global influence. Under the alias Heally, he has spent the past few years building a solo body of work that deserves wider attention.
Ellis samples instruments to build atmospheric textures, layering them with electronic beats and his own guitar parts — a process that feels less like composition in the traditional sense and more like excavation, pulling something latent out of sound and giving it space to exist. The results are immersive and meditative without ever feeling inert. His album 2022 — a collection of instrumental pieces made across that year — documents this process in its most sustained form to date, each track functioning as a kind of diary entry: personal, attentive, quietly affecting.
More recently, Ellis has been exploring house music under the Make Love Your Goal project, with new tracks available now on Bandcamp. It is a natural extension of the same sensibility — rhythm as structure, texture as meaning — applied to a different but related set of influences. The tracks Viper and New Dub give a clear indication of where this strand of his work is heading.
Ellis is also a certified music therapist, working with music as a tool for healing and transformation alongside his production work. The two practices are not as separate as they might seem. There is something fundamentally restorative in the way Heally’s music moves — it asks nothing of the listener except attention, and gives a great deal in return.
His music is available via the Dancing Turtle shop, and the Make Love Your Goal project can be found on Bandcamp and YouTube.
