Rachel Mason
The inimitable & unlimited talents & visions of Rachel Mason.
Queens, NY by way of LA artist Rachel Mason remains one of the most creative forces in the world, continuing her multidisciplinary pursuits that are never strictly committed to one singular medium. From her work in sculpture, filmmaking, stage-craft, song-craft, constantly pushing the conceptual envelope in the hopes of discovering new threads and fabrics of fascination and limitless intrigue. Known from her solo musical output, her group Little Band of Sailors, last year’s critically acclaimed musical film feature The Lives of Hamilton Fish, et al—Rachel is proud to present her new pop project Das Ram, in collaboration with LA artist Jeff Hassay. Presenting the premiere of the self-titled Das Ram EP, Rachel invites you to a strange new world full of human-animal hybrid characters (also being brought to visual life in the coinciding music videos created by Mason, along with Matthew Spiegelman) that materialize through the songs found via the Das Ram vessel. The following is but a prelude to the forthcoming album that will be debuting via Practical Records June 18 at LA’s LTD Gallery (also known as the site of Rodney Bingenheimer’s English Disco). Here the worlds of sounds, visions, and imaginary animal-people will be brought to life by Mason’s own creative narratives and Spiegelman’s corresponding visual pieces.
The Das Ram experience begins with the epic ballad of “Roses”, that sweeps into the audio frame like an opening intro to a great rock opera. Fans will definitely be able to hear Mason soaring high off the buzz from last year’s Hamilton Fish as she demonstrates a prolific and vast sense of the performing arts that edge into the terrains that haven’t been explores. This is everything from how Rachel arranges and embodies an ensemble of beings that spring from the imaginative ether in all sorts of forms and presences. Breaking the life and death continuum construct on “Roses”, Rachel’s world is further enriched from Hassay’s contributions as “Love Explodes” sends out a gigantic beacon of hope and happiness that raises higher than the rafters that bridges the points between your favorite best conceptual pop records to the most elaborate off-Broadway arrangements. But this is not to reduce the work between the polemics of showtunes and buzz-artist pop performances pieces as the following song “Sandstorm” rings as it rides off into wind-storming sunset of a feminist western-opera feature film. The warpath becomes trickier as the electronic decay elements turn up the rhythms for the stand off of “Tigers in the Dark!”, where fears of the known and unknowns are confronted in a tense duel held in a dim, torch lit arena. Join us now for a candid interview with the one and only Rachel Mason.
Tell us about how you first struck up a creative and collaborative bond with LA’s Jeff Hassay.
Jeff Hassey and I met in 2006 via an art exhibition curated by Sarah Lehrer-Graiwer his partner who is a great art writer and curator. She curated the first showing of a project called The Ambassadors Project, a series of miniature porcelain busts and to coincide with the show, I made an album in which I asked friends to imagine stepping into the minds of world leaders. Jeff mixed all the tracks. Over the years Jeff just continued to make really interesting and experimental mixes of my songs. We had this on-again, off-again collaboration which was always really fun and casual, but never made a full blown album or project until now. In some ways, we both cut our teeth together over the years improving on music in different ways. Jeff also works with tons of really interesting artists. Two of his regular collaborators are Cath Bloom and Imaad Wasif.
What can you tellus about the forthcoming album that will be debuting via Practical Records in June at LA’s LTD Gallery (the site of Rodney Bingenheimer’s English Disco)?
LTD gallery is located on the site of what was formerly Rodney Bingenheimer’s English Disco. Bingenheimer created this amazing space where some of the bands that had the biggest influence on me actual got started, bands like Depeche Mode and of course David Bowie. Shirley Morales is the gallery’s owner and she invited me to perform at her recreation of his space—which is really amazing to me. I get to launch this new album on the site where so many of my musical heroes partied!
I met Peter Hernandez aka Julius Smack when he did a brilliant performance at Teragram Ballroom, opening for Holly Herndon and Colin Self—and Peter later told me about his label, Practical Records which seemed like a perfect fit for what I do, as many of his collaborators area also visual artists, or have non-music backgrounds. The album is going to be exactly 30 minutes so that it fits perfectly onto a 30 minute cassette. It was actually a great thing for Jeff and I to have these tight parameters because we have so many songs that we play around with endlessly—this really reigns it in.
Latest and greatest things from the NYC and LA scenes and elsewhere that are inspring you right now?
I recently relocated back to Los Angeles from New York. And I have to say, LA feels so magical right now. I keep re-meeting friends who are doing so well with their projects. I’m not sure if its just that I’m at a time in my life when people are really in the zone with their work but it feels like an amazing creative time for my home city. One of my favorite spaces is Human Resources—its an art gallery / performance space which is run by artists. They are always doing totally unique shows that have a very specific Los Angeles flavor to them I think. I also love KChung radio—another local, artist-run radio station with DJ’s who run the gamot from focusing purely on drone music, to noise, to folks just talking about exhibitions, to playing pop music.
I’ve been somewhat casually hosting shows at my parents two stores, Circus of Books, which is also a local landmark of a store. Its a cross between a head-shop, magazine and thrift store and hardcore porn shop. Carla Bozulich, Larkin Grimm, Nora Keyes are some of the folks that have played. Its really been fun.
I have been deeply inspired by women in music lately—in particular women coming forward about abuse—like Ke$ha and a dear friend Larkin Grimm. Their bravery is so powerful to me—and I have just been moved by the outpouring of support—but also angry about the typical internet backlash. I wrote a piece in Huffington Post last week about it.
Rachel Mason live at HM157 in Los Angeles; photographed by Jon Alloway.
Describe the sort of synergy that informed the EP, and give us some insights into the writing, rehearsal, and song sketching process.
I usually write the basic elements of songs and then send them to Jeff, or go over to his studio and play the parts on keyboard and then he goes into his studio-world for days, playing with them. Often we go back and forth. Recently we’ve started where he writes riffs and I work with those. It sometime feels to me like throwing a penny into one of those coin-crushing machines at an amusement park. After Jeff cranks on the songs in his studio, they are almost indistinguishable from what we started with. Sometimes I freaking out with joy, and other times, I feel like it doesn’t quite work. But where Jeff and I are similar is that we both seem to be okay with total failure. And at hitting our heads against the wall, giving up and then starting something else. Because we both know that sometimes you have to plow through a song for days and throw it out just in order to write that one songs in 20 minutes that comes out perfectly. I’ve worked with a lot of musicians who get attached to various ideas—and get very precious and feel unwilling to change a chord, or a riff—but one of Jeff’s greatest qualities is his willingness to scrap an idea and try something else without getting too hung up. We work really well together for that reason but we also do end up with songs that are in various states of development but don’t know what to do with—Jeff has a pile of these that one day we’ll figure out what to do with them.
Rachel Mason introduces the world of Das Ram; visuals courtesy of Matthew Spiegelman.
Tell us too about the weekly music videos involving human animal hybrid characters, and what is it about the these species dichotomies that you find astounding?
The first nonhuman-human hybrid character that started everything off in this way was called Terrestrial Being—back in 2001, while I was a student at UCLA I was doing lots of performances and writing songs in this character—and in one performance, I scaled an eight story building with no ropes. [see the following video below] When I enter into the space of music and songwriting, it feels so sacred to me—as though I’m going far outside of myself—and meeting new characters who literally introduce themselves through the songs. I make hybrid-animal-humans, monsters, clowns, and other creatures in performances but for the first time I realized how right it feels to make a whole series of characters who exist just for their songs and Das Ram itself is the vessel to hold all of them. I am ecstatic about the videos that are forthcoming. The first one is for the song R#8220;Tigers in the Dark”.
Other various creative endeavors that you have in store?
The Lives of Hamilton Fish, my musical feature film is being adapted for stage by playwright Pia Wilson and producer Cindy Sibilsky. They are doing a reading in the coming weeks at the Public Theater in New York. Additionally my film is being released via Gravitas Ventures on May 24! Artforum will be hosting the video on their site- and I can send a link to it when its up. Also, I am developing another narrative script in which Das Ram plays a central role as both a character. Finally, I completed a film script which is another rock opera—and all the characters are stars, in the cosmic sense. I’m working with a producer to develop it further into a feature film. And finally, as always making art never knowing where it will lead.
