Hip-hop band seeks your attention

Published 5:00 am Friday, October 14, 2005

New-school hip-hop smashingly collides with old-school sensibilities in the music of Time Machine. The trio of East Coast transplants now living in L.A. have a back-in-the-day penchant for entertainment: call-and-response rhyming, obscure samples, scratching and, during shows, a little old-fashioned choreography.

Emcee Comel (pronounced ”cho-MEL”) discussed the ”eye-catching things going on” in Time Machine’s live performances.

”Coming up in hip-hop, all of us have been at shows where the sound’s terrible, and for the most part, you don’t even know this artist’s songs. So we’ve taken into account the other side. Let’s give them something visual, or, like, let’s hold their attention spans. We’ve got routines, we’ve got dances.

”The whole key to our show is we want to keep you focused on us and entertained at every point, so there’s never a dull moment. Something happens at some point where you’re just like, ‘Oh,’ and you’re just completely back in the show, just when you thought you wanted to go get your beer.”

Also central to the Time Machine entertainment ethos: The three – emcees Comel, 26, and Jaysonic, 27, plus DJ Mekalek, 28 – strive to make their songs about something.

We repeat, their songs are about something.

Rather than rap about nothing, ”or worse, always about rapping,” as Jaysonic recently told the music magazine XLR8R, they prefer to wax eloquent on ”an identifiable topic.”

Songs on their 2004 debut, the 18-song ”Slow Your Roll,” run the gamut from a hoped-for encounter with a fast-food hottie in ”Reststop Sweetheart” to the ribald rivalry of ”Spelling Bee” to male-female relationships in ”The Way Things Are.”

The Bulletin reached the three prior to their departure on a tour headlined by People Under the Stairs (PUTS), another Los Angeles-based hip-hop crew. Also on the tour is Giant Panda, an underground hip-hop act with roots in the Seattle area. The 16-date tour stops in Bend Sunday (see ”If You Go”).

The members of Time Machine spoke by conference call from the office of their L.A. home and studio. ”The rap group that lives together stays together,” their publicist jokes, but she may have a point.

The roots of Time Machine stretch back to Rhode Island and Washington, D.C. Mekalek and Jaysonic knew each other as high school students in Providence, where they began working together on music.

Later, when Jaysonic was a student at George Washington University, he met Comel, then a student at Brown. Mekalek would occasionally visit Jaysonic in D.C. to work on new tracks.

Jaysonic was calling the project ”Hot Air” because ”the songs weren’t about anything, just blowing off steam,” Mekalek explained. ”I don’t write the lyrics, but I think about that time, Jay was going in the direction of ‘I don’t want to rap about nothing anymore.’”

The goal of meaningful songs would be realized when the three worked together for the first time as a trio, on the tune ”Block Troopin’.”

Jaysonic had met Comel a few years earlier, and Comel happened to drop by one day when Jaysonic and Mekalek were stuck for a verse.

”We explained about the one song how it lacked a verse, how we didn’t know what needed to happen,” Mekalek said. ”Comel had this one verse.”

Interjects Comel, ”I had verses, but it wasn’t anything serious. I never thought to use them for anything.”

”But,” continues Mekalek, ”he had this one verse that fit the song perfectly. It wasn’t a song about how awesome you are as a rapper. It was a very specific topic, and Comel had a rhyme that fit it perfectly.”

The song, about walking around the neighborhood, was ”fairly amateurish, but it’s a great song for what it is,” boasts Mekalek.

The three bounced around a bit after their respective college careers, and they knew during the making of ”Slow Your Roll” that they needed to settle in the same place, and chose Los Angeles about two years ago. All three feel that, musically, they’re loyal to their East Coast roots.

”I don’t think (the move) affected our sound,” Jaysonic said. ”It’s been a good place because people are receptive to our sound here.”

”And,” added Mekalek, ”the fact that we’re all living together really stepped up our show. Now we all live in the same spot, so 9 o’clock rolls around, and we’re practicing.”

That living arrangement won’t necessarily translate into a rapid output of new material, Jaysonic said. ”We have a strong work ethic, but a slow work process.”

As a musical stopgap, Time Machine put out the June release ”TM Radio,” a compilation of new material and originals by friends, strung together much like the pirate radio show they used to do.

DJ Mekalek is at work on a solo project with guest rappers, and then ”the pressure will be on” for a new full-length Time Machine album, Jaysonic said.

The three also run their own label, Glow-in-the-Dark Records, through which they release their group’s work and that of artists they have signed.

”So there’s never a dull moment,” Jaysonic said. ”Well, there are some dull moments, but there’s never a dead moment.”

If You Go

What: People Under the Stairs with Time Machine, Giant Panda

When: 8 p.m. Sunday, doors open 7:30 p.m.

Where: Domino Room, 51 NW Greenwood Ave., Bend

Cost: Tickets are $12 in advance plus service charges, at Ranch Records (389-6116) and TicketsWest (800-992-8499), $15 at the door; all ages admitted

Contact: 388-1106