Weekender Feature | Melodesiac's debut 'Hands High' redefines hip-hop

Bursting into the Boston music scene with enough live energy, skill and members for two bands comes Tufts' very own Melodesiac, a nine-piece live hip-hop collective that effortlessly crosses genres and musical styles.

Last April, the band opened at Spring Fling, earning the spot by rocking to the top at Battle of the Bands. "It was great to win Battle of the Bands," senior Lawrence "eLCee" Charles said, adding that they "wished we could have performed later."

Now, Melodesiac can scratch another item off their to-do list: the debut album. The band's 12-track, self-produced and self-released "Hands High" is available for purchase, but the band members are doing more than selling CDs from their dorms or car trunks. Copies will also be available from CDFreedom.com and the iTunes Store as early as April 9.

Featuring Charles and Robert "Brent" Patterson (LA '05) on vocals, the eclectic group also boasts a horn section made up of junior James Harris (baritone saxophone), senior Nehemiah Green (tenor saxophone), and Yoni Dvorkis (alto saxophone) (LA '05).

With seniors Ben Bornstein on drums, Aaron Mehta on electric bass, Shahan Nercessian playing guitar and junior Arlen Spiro on keyboards, the group provides a refreshing and unique alternative to the often overly-synthetic and over-produced world of mainstream rap and hip-hop.

All that jazz and more

"The heart of everything we do is jazz, whether you hear it or not, from song to song," guitarist Nercessian said. Nercessian and Mehta point to the influence of legendary jazz artists like John Coltrane and jazz-funk groups like Soulive or Joshua Redman Elastic Band. "The thing about the band is that everyone brings their own background to it," Mehta said.

"I'm most strongly influenced by rap acts like The Roots, Mos Def, Common, A Tribe Called Quest and all those guys, and rock bands like 311, Rage Against the Machine and Stone Temple Pilots," Nercessian said.

Mehta affirmed the influence of live hip-hop bands like The Roots on Melodesiac's vision of their band. "Pretty much anyone who plays live hip-hop, at this point, we count as our influences," Mehta said.

"Nas gave me the confidence to do whatever I feel like doing; you know, if I want to sing on a track or rap on a track depending on my mood," Charles said. Patterson, the band's other vocalist, "brings the whole reggae thing, he wrote the majority of the reggae track on the album, and ... Brent was originally more of a singer, a soul thing, he's huge into Curtis Mayfield," Mehta said.

This diverse range of influences gives the band a unique musical identity. Explaining why Nas is his favorite rapper, Charles said he likes that "you can't pigeonhole him as an artist; different albums and even different songs on the same album convey different moods."

Regarding their genre, Charles said, "[In] terms of ... a label, I've been flip-flopping with that idea ... in the beginning I would have said we're a hip-hop band in general ... I would still say that you could call it a hip-hop band, but we have blurred the lines between genres a lot."

Chance meeting gives the band a lucky break

With their individual sound and style, perhaps it was only a matter of time before Melodesiac was noticed by the music community outside of Tufts. One of the band's biggest breaks came "completely by chance," Charles said.

While playing in the Emergenza Festival last year, "one of the judges loved us," Charles said. The judge worked for a company called Nimbit, and whom he encouraged Melodesiac to work with in order to obtain a distribution deal through iTunes and CDFreedom.com. Inclusion in the iTunes Store is a valuable promotional tool not usually open to many up-and-coming college musicians; despite that advantage, Nercessian predicts that many copies of the band's upcoming debut album will still be sold through live shows.

While Melodesiac was knocked out of the Emergenza Festival competition after placing third in the second-to-last U.S. round, it still proved to be a very valuable experience, even if they only distribute a fraction of their total sales online.

The band can't play Battle of the Bands this year due to a rule that excludes past winners, but this doesn't mean Melodesiac doesn't have a bright horizon ahead. The band looks forward not only to playing at Clark University's Spree Day alongside Lupe Fiasco and State Radio later this month, but to their future as a band after Tufts as well.

With five seniors in the band preparing to graduate in a little over a month, it is a particularly important time for Melodesiac, who has "real life ahead of us," Charles said.

Looking to the future, Charles maintains that the band isn't ready to put aside all their hard work and musical ambitions yet, preferring to see the next couple months as a test of their strength as a group. "My opinion changes on this every day," Nercessian said. But with the release of their debut CD, Melodesiac have found the catalyst that keeps them motivated and optimistic.

Melodesiac reflects on 'Hands High'

While the band's sound has been a work in progress since it formed, the title of their first album was decided upon rather quickly.

"We were sitting around at the last practice before we went into the studio, and we were all panicking, because we couldn't come up with a name, and we started just going through lyrics, and Brent, our vocalist, was just sitting there, and he goes 'Hands High.' And we were all like, 'Yup, that's it,'" Mehta said.

But this ultimately easy decision shouldn't give the listener the impression that the actual recording the project was any small feat. "Our initial plan was to finish recording this CD in 60 hours, which was just a ridiculous idea," Nercessian said. The band quickly discovered that unless you're The Beatles in 1963 or a hardcore punk band with a certain disregard for how you actually sound, you have to spend more time recording your first album.