Mike Sempert and Ellipsis, a local jazz/funk band, recently had a demo CD put out by Telepathy Records, a local label run by Tufts student Elio DeLuca. They can be seen on campus at Oxfam on Nov. 3, and Brown and Brew on Nov. 29. Their CD, The Limbic Trip, is available at the campus bookstore and through the distributor's web site, www.telepathyrecords.com. I talked to Mike, a sophomore at Tufts, about the band, playing on campus, and the limbic system.
What are your musical influences?
My foremost influence in terms of being affected personally by music is John Coltrane, although the music that I play in my band is not so influenced by him. Another guy who I'd rank way up there would be Thomas Mapfumo, a Zimbabwean pop musician who was a big part of the anti-colonial upheaval of the '60s and '70s - music played a very big part in that.
What does Zimbabwean pop sound like?
It's beautiful. It's breathtaking. It's amazing. It's very rooted in tradition. He originally started out as just kind of what a lot of folks in Africa were doing in the early '60s. He was singing Motown - he had short cropped hair, and he was doing American music, rock 'n roll, in Zimbabwe. And then he kind of went through a personal transition and ended up going back to imbira music and Zimbabwean-rooted music, but instead of playing with imbiras, he had guitars. I'm also really into hip-hop, really into The Roots, A Tribe Called Quest... I'm into electronic music a little bit, Square Pusher, Ronnie Size, even Aphex Twin, and that's the stuff that is kind of coming out in this music. I'm trying to listen to Drum & Bass, because I feel like Drum & Bass has a lot in common with jazz playing, jazz drumming, so we're kind of integrating that. Composition-wise, Thelonius Monk and Wayne Shorter are two composers that I look up to more than most.
How much of your playing is improvised?
That's actually been happening a lot the past couple gigs - we've just been playing, and we'll start with a tune of mine, and it'll just turn into its own thing, and it's funny, 'cause the CD is so different from what we're doing now
In what way?
I think that we've all, in the short span since we made that record, gotten better, which is remarkable. That's kind of the phase that a lot of people are at: making leaps, stutter steps and then leaps, and it's incredible to watch. These guys who you played with a couple months ago, and then you play with them again and they sound incredible. It's great. So they all sound better, we've all improved a lot, we've been working a lot, but as a group we're better. And I think that's about us getting to know each other, and playing together.
The last gig we played - we played at the Crafts House - I advertised it as "live psychedelic improvised dance music," 'cause that's kind of what we've been playing, and my goal with this music is to create... I feel like a lot of people forget that jazz is about sweat and moving and getting into it, and it's about sex, and having a good time, and it's a really, really fun and heavy and exciting music and I think a lot of people forget that and associate with the cocktail party vibe, and it's not like that, it's....
The word jazz, it's debated where it comes from, but the two options are that it either comes from the word Jasmine, which was a really cheap perfume that whores used to wear, or jizz. Directly from jizz. So either way, it's all about sex, and people kind of forget that and get wrapped up in this really uptight vibe, and we want to bring back the fun, and the excitement, and make people comfortable dancing to jazz. So a lot of times, we're playing more funk-oriented beats that are more danceable. The idea is that this music is supposed to be exciting.
What's a 'limbic trip' [referring to the title of the album]?
"Limbic" refers to the part of your brain, the limbic system, that controls motivational and emotional behavior. And "trip" is just to signify experience. In some ways, it's drug-related, but it doesn't have to be. It's a trip: it's its own experience. It just flowed right, and honestly, a lot of the titles to my tunes are just words that I think sound nice together.
"Cosmo's Tazmanian Deviltry?" [the title of one of the group's songs]
That one and "Rusky Dusky Neon Dust" are both titles from [Hunter Thompson's book] The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. So in that way, it is somewhat associated with the psychedelic, but mostly just because I read that book, and I remembered thinking, "God, these chapter titles are so great, I'm gonna have to use these for tune titles." There was a while where I was writing a couple tunes a week, and it wasn't about sitting down, and somehow encompassing an experience into a song, it was like, "I'm writing music because this is what I do, I'm a composer, and I'll put titles on these so I remember which one's which, and these are cool words." Or "Ashley's Mechanical Pencil." I was in the practice rooms down in Aidekman - which are very uninspiring places - and I wrote a tune out, and I didn't have a pencil. My friend Ashley was walking by, and I borrowed her pencil. And it turned out not even to be hers, it was this girl Sara's, so it's pretty much a complete misnomer.
What actions is Ellipsis taking to save Tufts's ailing social scene?
Well, that's a good question. The idea is to create an experience where people can come and dance, and experience something new. I think it's tough now. The thing about it is that for a while there was such a heavy frat scene - and that's cool, and I don't have any problem with people who enjoy going to frats. But I personally don't enjoy going to frats, and I know a lot of people who don't, and I really like the idea of creating a new experience for people, where people are like, "Wow, this is totally different, and I have no idea what's happening to me, and I don't care, I'm just gonna dance and have fun." And that's what I'm constantly trying to do, as a musician and a composer, trying to do something new, something that people haven't quite heard before. So this is kind of a house party atmosphere: people can drink - if they want to, they can eat some mushrooms - and come down, and we're going to create that kind of experience... but because the frat scene itself is kind of fading as well, it's not so much an alternative as it might be the only option. And there are a lot of people who just aren't going to go in for that.
Yeah, it's true, Tufts University is not dominated by people who would be like, "Wow, live psychedelic hip-hop improvised jazz dance music, yeah!" There are a lot of people who are going to be like, "What the f--k?" And that's cool too. But I definitely think there's a population at Tufts that needs to go and hear a live jam band, if that's what you want to call it, and have a good time.
