7th September 2023

Exclusive Interview: Masquerader talk writing and recording “Nothing Will Change”!

Seven days and seven deadly sins after our first encounter of the strange kind with Industrial Post-Hardcore, Math Rock and Alt. Hip-Hop genre bending trio Masquerader, it’s time for round #2. It may have taken longer than anyone could have imagined to appear but their debut EP “Nothing Will Change” finds them create something refreshingly unique with hints of 90’s influence scattered all over it like ashes during a volcanic eruption. It’s safe to say it’s been worth the wait so without further much ado about nothing, here’s a conversation about writing, recording an gear…

How did your previous experiences writing and recording help to smooth the path of the new record? “Back before we debuted with Pressure on Small Pond’s Emerging Project, we’d begun trying to track and mix ourselves and were set into a cycle of getting something down, doubting our DIY quality, and then starting from scratch with what we’d gained in experience. It was nice timing cause we had a pretty good demo of Pressure to bring into that studio session, and we were toying with whether we should even be bothering with the DIY effort… That experience at Small Pond was great, but there were limits due to being an Arts Council funded project and being just one part of a bigger compilation. That put a restraint on some of our more experimental ideas we had in mind. Being in a pro environment however gave us the confidence to prioritise our creative control and insight into where we felt our energies should be concentrated, and it set a bar to be matched in quality, so we decided to take our time and return to the rest of the EP from a fully DIY approach”

How does the writing process of a new track start? Melody, riff or rhythm first? How does it evolve from there before you consider it the finished article? “Normally it starts with a handful of riffs on bass or synth, we bring those to a practice with a vague idea of structure. From there we start working it over and normally the two who haven’t heard it take the idea in a whole new direction – When Chris came up with the original riffs for “Pressure” he had it in mind as a stoner rock track which it definitely isn’t anymore. We’re very collaborative writers so we tend not to write entire structures before working on it together so there’s room to change things. It does take a while for the songs to take full form though, while a foundation of bass and drums can be done by jamming in the room, it takes longer to develop the synths, and then there’s normally a little back and forth to get the live instruments fit with the synths and vice versa”

Aside from the Mastering everything was done in-house by the band, so how did it feel to be your own taskmasters? Did not having an outside ear get you closer to your vision of sound? “Doing it ourselves gave a good opportunity for trial and error with some of our riskier ideas and figuring out how small tweaks play out for the track as a whole. We spent ages going back and forth with ourselves and putting that expectation on a studio engineer just isn’t reasonable. That said, it was definitely a huge amount of work for us and Danny in particular so it wasn’t a flawless approach either. The upcoming second EP that we mentioned last time takes the opposite end of the stick. We feel like NOTHING WILL CHANGE was a big achievement as a DIY record, but it was slow and stressful, so we wanted to take our newly gained experience back into the studio with some of our more ‘straight-forward’ songs and test where that creative balance is for us now. We look forward to what people think of both approaches!”

If you had the opportunity to bring a guest on board in the studio, who would you like to work with and why?

Tim: “Probably Jordan Dreyer, Vocalist of La Dispute. For me, Masquerader & La Dispute both contain the break neck paced vocals mixed with a more poetic view on wordplay/lyricism that I think would be an absolute blast to combine and explore”

Chris: “I’m a huge fan of pop vocalists crossing over into heavy genres and I’m a massive fanboy so I’d pick Marina (ex-of the Diamonds), her deep-cut Late of the Pier cover has huge potential”Danny: “I think it would be pretty nuts to get a producer from the experimental rap world into the studio, like Parker Corey from Injury Reserve, JPEGMAFIA, or William Hutson and Jonathan Snipes of Clipping. Just to see what nonsense we’d get with our noisy punk band as the input. In general though, it was a lot of fun to get a few friends involved via the remixes on NOTHING WILL CHANGE, and super exciting to get back versions of those tracks that were brand new and completely surprising to us. We think they’re really good and we’d like to do more of that again as we make more mates down the line. Big ups to Simon, Caleb and Umair!”

For us gear nerds out there, can you tell us what you’re using gear wise (pedals, strings, drums etc) to get your sound?

Chris (Bass):
“Strings: Currently messing around with the higher four out of a set for a five-string bass but typically heavy gauge nickel Rotosounds.

Pedals: A revelation for me was getting a line splitter (Boss LS2) to divide between the main signal mostly clean into a bass amp and an effected high signal into a guitar amp. The flexibility it added was a game-changer.

Otherwise, BC1X compression before the LS2. The “guitar” signal through a Rat distortion, wah pedal and EQ; The bass signal goes into a Russian Darkglass-clone for some extra oomph”

Danny (Vocals):
“Core: An old 2015 Macbook Pro on Mojave 10.14 running Ableton Live 11.

Controllers: Novation launchkey mini MK3 and Korg nanokontrol 2.

Interface: 2nd Gen Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 running mono signal to the desk and a click to Tim.

The largest laptop stand I could find on Amazon.

The ableton set is running all the little layers of electronics on different tracks, separated into their own scenes and clips as loops of midi synths and samples that I trigger and
queue up live. This allows us to move freely between sections rather than be bound to a backing track. I can also manipulate everything using plugin effects that I have mapped to my controllers, like ring modulators, delays, distortions, and stutters. I also have noise generators and feedback loops set up on faders to replicate that guitar squeal energy”

Tim (Drums):
“Cymbals: Always been a huge Meinl Guy. Have had a tonne of different types but keep going back to their Byzance Medium or Jazz ranges. I love the sound of the thinner cymbals but as a hard hitter they can be quite expensive to replace and the medium’s seem to be giving me more longevity.

Drums: Rarely get to use my own as often have to use headliners or a house kit for gigs. But I’ve been using a Mapex Saturn as my home kit for years.

Snare: Tama Starphonic Bubinga 14×6” snare. Get asked about the lovely crack from this beauty quite often!

Bass Drum Pedal: Had a DW5000 pedal for close to 10 years now and still going strong.

Sticks: Vic Firth 5Bs in white. Always try out other sticks here and there but keep coming back to these.

In-Ear Monitors: Shure-315 in ears that connect to Danny’s Synthwork. I get a click track from him which changes live depending on what he’s doing on his end”

What difference would it make to you as a band if you could land an endorsement from a gear manufacturer? “It probably doesn’t come as a shock that we love having more buttons to push and toys to play with so having the showcase through any manufacturer’s products would blow our little minds. At our level there are definitely ideas that are limited by budget and equipment, so a little bit more freedom on that would be a huge benefit. And obviously being selected at all would be a huge honour”

Danny: “I think we should get a food endorsement. Surely one of the ‘guinea pig test’ American fast-food places we have now in Reading wants that underground punk identity? We’re here for when Denny’s comes knocking…”