5 QUESTIONS FOR DAVID MASON (OF TEMPORARY TAPES)
This week we get some insight from the brain behind the electronic music cassette label-head, David Mason, also associate with Listening Center, Hess Is More, and some next level sort of sh_t in NYC. I’m happy that our paths crossed once upon a time or two.
Please, seek out and support this wizard of analogmagic: temporarytapes.bandcamp.com
FOLLOW ON THE 'GRAM: @temporary_tapes
Thank you for reading and for your interest in these things!
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What are some instruments / sounds you're experimenting with these days?
Over quite a long period I’ve gradually built up a small modular synthesizer. For the past while I’ve been experimenting a lot with quantizers and analog shift registers. A quantizer “quantizes” incoming control voltages into tempered pitches, modes, or arpeggios and an analog shift register acts as a sort of 4-stage sample and hold that you can use to produce canon-like patterns with 4 oscillators. it offsets the notes of a sequence in time by one so it can get quite dense harmonically, and with the quantizer you don’t actually need to use a keyboard. They work pretty well together, and it’s so addictive. I’ve also for the first time in my life acquired a guitar, which I am presently only able to use as a sound source.
Are you composing or programming?
Probably somewhere in between - for electronic music I don’t compose in the standard sense of writing everything down, although I’d like to explore graphic scores for electronic music. It’s probably more akin to improvising. A lot of it involves patching that although it can be replicated, the sounds and final notes will never be exactly repeatable. So I tend to think - lazily - of the audio recording as being the “score”, which comes at the end of the process. A lot of the more conventional stuff I have made in the past is so simple that it seems a bit odd to write it down. Many of those kinds of pieces also have a sort of ephemeral quality, as if they were never meant to be around very long, inviting themselves to be lost. Now, the patching of modules and the playing of notes on a keyboard have become the programming aspect, and when it reaches a satisfactory state of performance and sound, and is recorded, the piece is "composed". In the past, I have played the musical elements in real time, with two hands, but recently I’ve been trying to learn how to make generative pieces that start from one simple idea and evolve from there in the modular, making patches so that the composition develops over time.
What inspired the origin of Temporary Tapes?
Temporary Tapes came about due to the fact that when I was operating Listening Center via Bandcamp and mailing out tapes and records, it felt like a record label, but just for myself. Then I had the idea of trying to include like-minded artists, with a view to highlighting projects that might be overlooked or neglected, and to try and be a bit less individualistic…it’s basically a psychological experiment. I have recurring desires to always return to the fundamentals of things to find inspiration and ways forward and the tape label has followed this tendency, notably in the design department. The initial few releases were intended to look as if they were printed in a medical office of some kind, the tapes possibly containing information that might not necessarily be music. They do of course - electronic music sounds really nice on cassette and its sponginess can round off some of the hard edges of digital recordings and also provide a more unusual experience for the listener which is not centered around convenience and “best” quality. It feels different.
In an age of digital everything, what fuels your interest in such tangible analog(ue) media?
I like digital, mp3s especially - not for their audio quality, but for the role they serve. They are sort of the cassettes of our time - a bit lo-fi, yet we can’t quite get rid of them. But I’ve always, like many people, been fascinated with analogue media - tape and film. Cassettes were a part of my early life, recording things off the radio, swapping them with friends, and I played along with records on the drums. Also growing up in Dublin in the late 70s/early 80s, all TV was produced on film, or sort of bleak video. So all that grain, alias-y memory is there and I gravitate towards it subconsciously. The thing with analogue media is that it is, as you say, tangible. It is tactile, and the interfaces of devices differ - the actions involved produce narrower outcomes. For me, the digital realm provides really good tools but I get more inspired when working with analogue media - there are unknown chance operations, accidents. There is so much room for intuition and for error and in the context of this data-driven world, it can feel strangely subversive, to be off the grid. It’s like an instrument in itself.
If you had the task of naming a small town full of obsolete tools and resources (but hidden magic),
what would you call it?
Continuumsville!
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