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ON THE COUCH WITH: Masonia

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ARTIST INTERVIEW

Access All Areas.net.au: So tell us your story thus far, how you got to where you are now?
Masonia: After forming Masonia, we played till we were assless.. Next thing we had an album!

Access All Areas.net.au: Do you feel you have more control over your career as an independent singer/songwriter?
Masonia: We wouldn’t know, we have never been signed to a major but their help is always welcome.

Access All Areas.net.au: Can you tell us a bit about your music?
Masonia: Our music is born from commitment to each other and our belief in the same dream.

Access All Areas.net.au: And how about your latest release?
Masonia: This album embodies all of our pains, gains and losses. Recording it was a true dream come true.

Access All Areas.net.au: How would you choose to describe your music to someone who was unfamiliar with it?
Masonia: I’m not good with words but ‘F**king awsome’ comes to mind!

Access All Areas.net.au: Which artists are you and/or your music influenced by?
Masonia: Van Morrison, Picasso, Metallica and the list goes on.

Access All Areas.net.au: What has been the major highlight or highpoint for you thus far?
Masonia: Debuting at No# 12 on the Australasian Charts.

Access All Areas.net.au: When a fan goes to one of your shows, what can they expect?
Masonia: A cover charge, expensive beer and a bloody good time.

Access All Areas.net.au: What has been a major stepping-stone for getting you where you are today?
Masonia: Finding each other.

Access All Areas.net.au: What are your plans from here?
Masonia: Figuring out how to score some petrol money for our next show.

ARTIST BIOGRAPHY

First, the name: Solid and even a little stately. “Masons are builders, builders in stone” reasons songwriter, vocalist, alchemist Altijan Childs. “We’re builders in music.”

Second, the sound: Imposing, layered, textured, ambitious – a grand sweep across the senses. “Drawing comparisons is the hardest thing for most people, I think” offers keyboard player, backing vocalist and co-founder Daniel Rivers. “We often hear at gigs, ‘I haven’t heard music like this before so why do I feel so good about it? Why am I reacting like this?’ Although you can sense some initial hesitation they soon become very accepting.”

If the reaction is visceral then it is because the music comes from a true place, a number of them actually. Altijan sees it as “a nice funky soup,” explaining, “We’ve let the band take a natural course - there’s a bass player who loves r&b, a drummer who’s into rock’n’roll, a keyboard player who grew up with jazz and loves soul.”

And then there’s Altijan, described readily by his bandmates as “inspirational” - a whirling dervish both confrontational and beguiling who commands attention by not just delivering the songs he so expertly crafts but dramatically living them out before an often startled audience. “I just explode on stage,” he explains, not entirely sure himself of the nature of transformation process that occurs when he fronts a microphone. Some observers are reminded of Peter Garrett or Joe Cocker, principally because “My hands are doing the weirdest things, even though I’m playing guitar.”

Ask Altijan about his influences, his pivots, his yardsticks and they come tumbling out in a rush. There’s Schubert, opera, classics, Metallica, early Beatles, Sting, U2, Iggy Pop and, with particular emphasis, Dave Matthews - “joy and turmoil all rolled into one, he triggers me.” His own tale is worth telling. Submerged in music before his teens he had a high school band called Over The Top at 13. There were Battle of the Bands and serious offers from serious industry figures who, even then, were much taken by the animated kid and songs that seemed to he coming from someone twice his age. But nobody quite believed enough to overcome school constraints and parental concerns. “Over The Edge were more friends than musicians, I’m not sure they appreciated having a songwriter,” he shrugs. “Now I have a band that does appreciate having a songwriter and that’s a great feeling, a real creative impetus.”

From that experience came the song Simple, which he stashed away until the end of 2004 when, as Masonia’s debut single, with independent distribution, it made it to #27 on the N.S.W. ARIA chart, #41 on the National ARIA chart, #2 on the Australasian ARIA chart and #2 on the Independent charts. Some had seen it coming. “I can’t believe this band is not signed!” Nova’s Bianca Dye had exclaimed.

The years in between were formative if somewhat frustrating. “I didn’t understand the way the industry worked, how you get pigeonholed,” he admits. “With me it was: Here I am, here we are, you tell me if there’s any room out there for us. And maybe there wasn’t.”

Altijan had continued playing, with musicians coming and going. He finished high school, wrote more songs, kept rehearsing with whoever was on board at the time. “I started going to shows, as a punter” says Daniel, “Altijan was playing rock songs with a good soul feel and that’s what drew me to it.” A strong bond evolved between the two – a practical division of responsibilities that began to shift fortunes. Bass playing uni student Moe Bloomfield threw in his lot with the pair and then session drummer Nathan Merriment, after playing a few songs with them, politely tendered “If you guys have no objections I’d like to be a member of this band rather than just a session drummer.

That was less than two years ago. Masonia was in place and things gelled quickly. “Altijan is a driving force” sets out Daniel, “and if you have someone so expressive who can capture what a band is all about, what it’s striving for, it makes it easier for someone to come along and play it. He’s very articulate, you know what he’s on about and that makes it easier to soak in the songs, whether you’re in the band or the audience. And when you have three other people who share it that’s just fabulous. It works, it makes music enjoyable and that really shows in a live situation.”

That degree of cohesion proved invaluable when Masonia came entered Damien Gerard Studios in Sydney in 2005 to cut their expansive debut album World On Fire. “We were only in studio for 8-9 days, so we just crammed it in. But it wasn’t daunting once. It came together so well because it felt so comfortable for us all. We’d rehearsed so much that it was pure enjoyment to lay it all down – I lapped it up, every bit of it. Of course I’d been through a lot of the experiences with him that resulted in those songs. My dad’s a jazz musician and he once told me that you can’t rely on music to make you rich but you can rely on it to make you happy. Well this made me very happy.”

As it did manager John Martinovich, who has moved about the industry for many years, always with an ear cocked for something to challenge and engage him. “Being aggressively original and nothing like most of what is happening out there at the moment they’re bloody hard to break, that’s for sure, but I was so tired of listening to music that always had the sort of songs that I’d heard over and over before that I couldn’t go past them. Altijan is the best frontman I’ve ever seen, super-theatrical but so honest about what he’s doing that I’ve sometimes seen tears in his eyes on stage, As a band they know what they’re doing. They don’t stuff around, they listen to me, they trust my guidance.”

And they trust themselves, their own musical instincts, which does require a certain courage when you’re trying to eek out a living in a competitive Sydney band scene; one where tribute acts cream off much of the work. “For a long time reviewers and critics ran away, they didn’t know where to put us,” laments Altijan. “I’m glad I stuck to my guns. When I started to write people told me I was confused but that’s not the case. A thread relates every song to the other and they’re often about simple relationships. I can be emotional and esoteric and I sometimes have my dark side visiting but I love people, I’m highly compassionate.”

Those qualities all come to the fore in the tensile, direct and lyrically concise 3168 and the elegant, piano-driven King Is Dead, the songs which close the album and which both Altijan and Daniel cite as personal favourites. “3168 was one of the first full songs we had as a band,” recalls Daniel. “It came together on the spot. That seems so long ago now because Altijan has enough material for us to do a second album tomorrow. The songs keep coming.”

As does the attention and the praise for a band of substance, dimension and towering potential. And the word is most definitely getting out. A recent sold-out show at the Gaelic Club, the audience split event between the sexes, “went off”, with Altijan storming, stalking and attacking like a man possessed – possessed by a passion that starts somewhere in the guts and roars out through the heart. “Maybe it’s that men like a ritualistic manhood ethic,” contends Altijan. Maybe they do, and a whole lot more as well.

www.masonia.com.au

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MY FESTIVAL EXPERIENCE

Cut Copy
We played an amazing festival called T in the Park in Scotland, which was a year and a half ago now, but that was really amazing in terms of being, by far, the biggest crowd we've played infront of, I think it was- we played in the dance tent, and it was the middle of the day, so it wasn't night time craziness, but they packed like 20,000 people into this tent, and it was totally round, it was just the best kind of crowd to be playing infront of, we were really suprised and weren't expecting to get such a big reception, particually in Scotland. We only really had played a handful of shows in Glasgow and hadn't really played anywhere else, so yeah, that's definitely up there.

Ideal Lineup?
We kind of actually had this discussion when we first started playing together, before we even did any shows as Cut Copy, we made up these phoney band names and played a few shows at this pub, sort of on the wrong side of the tracks and a bit run down, you could ring up like the night before and get a gig the next day, so it wasn't really like, you know.. anything amazing. But we booked in, I think a couple of times under false names, just to make sure we could actually play our instruments and do everything before we actually put Cut Copy up on the stage, and I think in that year we sort of had this imaginary- it wasn't like a festival it was kind of the idea of billing this gig where it was us headlining with Sonic Youth, and then Daft Punk would be like the warm up DJs, and that was like our ultimate show, ever! And then we've actually played with Daft Punk at the end of last year so we just feel like we've maybe partly lived that dream a little bit, even though they obviously weren't the warm up DJs for us, but yeah, we've ticked off one of those things at least. All we've got to do now is play with Sonic Youth!