Travis: Interview

Travis
Band Of Fathers

Sixteen years is a long time in pop. Since Travis released their debut album Good Feeling in 1997 – just days after the release of Oasis’s bloated Be Here Now bought the curtain down on the Britpop era – a lot has happened for the Glasgow four-piece. They were prematurely declared fit for the critical slag heap right before they became the biggest selling band in the UK; one member broke his neck and nearly died, another married a Hollywood star; and they’ve all become fathers. Now, after a five-year hiatus, Travis are preparing to get back on the road with material from accomplished new album Where You Stand.

“We finished touring in 2008. I think it was possibly the best tour we’ve ever had. I think we were just in a really good space and at the end of it we all said, ‘OK, let’s go and be with our families.’ So that’s what we did.”

Travis’s lead singer and songwriter Fran Healy has found time for a chat from Dublin where he’s performing at Dylan Fest and hanging out with “some friends from New York” or, more precisely, Albert Hammond Jr from The Strokes and Boz Scaggs. I’m sure his preference would be to be with jamming with them but Healy doesn’t ever make me feel that he’d rather be somewhere else. He’s engaging, interesting and an absolute gent.

“We were very aware that the band would always be there but your kids will not always be kids. If you can afford it financially, and we’re lucky enough to have been successful, I think it’s good to spend that time watching toddlers grow up.”

There was never any serious falling out but everyone in the band was aware that a break was needed. “When we came to London in 1996 we were four very close friends and four individuals. And it happens in every band, but you become this one thing. You become a quarter of yourself. The time we’ve had with our families and away from each other was good – it feels like we’ve caught up with ourselves. We’re now four individuals again.”

If the results of the latest album are anything to go by, that time apart has certainly done Travis the world of good. Where You Stand sees the band return to familiar territory of melodic, radio-friendly rock, but with an assuredness and positive energy not heard in their other recordings from the last decade. They sound reinvigorated.

While the guys some took some time out, Healy recorded a well-received 2010 solo album, Wreckorder. Did he ever consider that his time with Travis was done? After all, they nearly called it a day a decade ago after drummer Neil Primrose dived into the shallow end of a swimming pool, broke his neck and almost drowned while on tour. (He’s since made a full recovery). And getting together must be a strain now that the four band mates all have families and are geographically dispersed – Healy lives in Berlin, while bassist Dougie Payne spends much of his time in New York with actress wife Kelly MacDonald.

“No. Dougie and I have this thing where we like the sanctity of a band: no matter what, just try and hold it together and get through the ups and downs … So I don’t think that not getting back together was an option or even came into our heads.” Healy suggests his solo material might even be considered a Travis album of sorts. “I already had the songs. I even asked Andy [Dunlop, Travis guitarist] to come and play on it. I put this record in a line with our albums and why not? I write for Travis and Wreckorder is pretty Travis-y.”

Aah. Yes. ‘Travis-y’. Somewhere along the line that descriptor became a byword for melancholic, middle-of-the-road, inoffensive music that your mum and dad would like, and probably your gran too. For dullness. It’s certainly unfair, but perhaps when you shift 2.7 million units of an album in your home country – as Travis did with The Man Who, the LP which featured worldwide hit single ‘Why Does It Always Rain On Me?’ – you have to expect that you’re not going to be considered cool anymore.

“The funny thing about that is that we’ve never been a band that would look at the wallpaper in a room and try and make a record that fits with the wallpaper,” says Healy. “When we made The Man Who it really didn’t fit the pattern. What you found over the next 18 months was the success of that album changed that pattern and we sort of became invisible. Then we were the pattern, then we were the wallpaper.”

The fickleness of the music press and the arbitrary nature of a hit record is something that Healy knows well. British music glossy Q Magazine awarded the The Man Who a two-star review upon release and then nominated it for ‘Record of the Year’ six months later. In 2006, the same magazine rated the album as the 70^th best of all time. “You realise that the success of that record wasn’t driven by [the media] and it wasn’t driven by us. It was driven by people who got a chance to hear the songs.

“Every year there is an album like The Man Who. Whether it’s Adele or Daft Punk, there’s always that record that goes beyond style and substance and taps into the zeitgeist. No one has control over that. Record companies might congratulate themselves at the end of the year but it’s all retrospective. I know because it happened. It’s arbitrary and wonderful – it is! – but as an honest Scot I can’t take responsibility for [the success of The Man Who] and nor can anyone.”

An incident such as the Q U-turn has got to make a musician sceptical of critical commendation and condemnation. Although he admits to always reading reviews, Healy finds that interviews often provide more useful feedback. “Questions make you see different things … It’s a bit like therapy. I’ll say, ‘Fuck! I didn’t even think about that!’ I’ve been asked about the title of the new album, Where You Stand. Well, there’s the song called ‘Where You Stand’. I liked the words, I liked how they looked graphically and that’s why I chose the title. But I didn’t think of the larger meaning of it. We’ve had these five years off, we’ve become fathers. In a sense we’re in the middle of the swimming pool: you start your life in the deep end, you then find your feet, and eventually you get sucked down the plughole at the end.

“At the moment, as fathers, we can look at our children at one end and then we can look at our parents at the other. It’s a very interesting point in anyone’s life and I reckon the album was written from that.” For sure, ‘family’ was on the band’s collective mind when they were writing Where You Stand: the opener is called ‘Mother’ and ‘Reminder’ is a series of helpful nuggets of advice to Healy’s seven-year-old son Clay (“Celebrate / Don’t be late / Finish what’s on your plate”).

Reinvigorated and refreshed, Travis will, later this month, leave for a lengthy tour that will see them visit the USA, Mexico, South America and Europe. I wonder how Healy will cope being away from his wife, German photographer Nora Kryst, and Clay, after spending so much time together over the last five years. “My son’s at school, he’s happy,” says Healy. “He understands that I do this job and that when I go away I may be away for three weeks … We work on sleeps. He asks, ‘How many sleeps is that?’ ‘That’s 22 sleeps,’ I say. ‘Oh right, OK, that’s quite long.’ But he gets it.”

Unfortunately, there are no current plans for a trip to Australia, but that might change if the band gets its way. “I’ve written an email to our office and I asked why we haven’t been to Australia for 13 years. What’s going on with that?!” says Healy. “We loved coming [to Australia]. I sent the emails saying, ‘What the fuck? Let’s go back there!’.”

Where You Stand is out now on Red Telephone Box

Article published in The Music Network, 28th September 2013

Bliss n Eso – Circus In The Sky: Album Review

BLISS N ESO
Circus In The Sky
Illusive
3.5/5

Bliss N Eso are quickly outgrowing Australian hip hop. On their fifth album, the band has embraced expansive production, rock beats, uplifting choruses and popular samples. Circus In The Sky aims for the stars.

The unlikely voice of Charlie Chaplin and his speech from 1940 film The Great Dictator starts proceedings in rousing fashion. Daniel Merriweather sings on the soulful ‘Can’t Get Rid Of This Feeling’ and ‘Home Is Where The Heart Is’ takes a funky ‘70s rock riff as a foundation for some down-to-earth rhyming about the comfort of familiarity. Both are instantly likeable and it’s no wonder the latter track gave the boys their highest chart debut.

B’N’E are still capable of the odd clunky couplet and lyrical cliché – hear Eso on ‘Animal Kingdom’ for example: “I set the kitchen ablaze / And take to the stage like Ricky Gervais … Tell it like it is in a world gone mad / I paint the town red like my girl on rag”. But these lazy slips are occasional and can be forgiven considering the effort that has gone into the album as a whole. Getting signoff on the Chaplin sample was far from easy as, presumably, was coaxing NYC rap god Nas into contributing. His verse on ‘I Am Somebody’ is as good as any he has committed to record in the last few years. Circus is humourous too – Australian heavyweights 360, Pez, Seth Sentry and Drapht sound like they’re having a blast together on record for the first time on ‘Reservoir Dogs’ while DJ Izm shows what he can do with some funnies from ‘Loosest Aussie’ Alex Williamson.

Bliss, Eso and Izm are classy ringleaders and provide plenty of entertainment under the big top of Circus In The Sky.

Article published in The Brag, 25th June 2013

Mavis Staples – One True Vine: Album Review

MAVIS STAPLES
One True Vine
Anti/Warner
4/5

For the second time in succession Mavis Staples has teamed up with Jeff Tweedy of Wilco, the pair following up 2010’s Grammy-winning You Are Not Alone with One True Vine. For the second time in succession they’ve made a marvellous modern gospel – by way of alt country – album.

It kicks off with ‘Some Holy Ghost’, a song that only recently showed up for the first time on Low’s The Invisible Way, another Tweedy production. As he does with Mimi Parker’s voice on that version, Tweedy shows his knack for stripping everything back when a song calls for it. Staples, whose voice has taken on a gravelly quality as she has aged, gets right under your skin. A bright treatment of Funkadelic’s ‘Can You Get To That’ reminds us of The Staples Singers’ gospel/funk heyday and later Pops Staples’ ‘I Like The Things About Me’ is given a Black Keys-style lo-fi rock makeover.

The highlight may be ‘Jesus Wept’, which very nearly made me shed a tear too. Staples sings, “My throat quits when I try to say / How I long for the day / How I wish there was a way I could see you again”, proving that loss doesn’t get any easier to deal with as you get older. Thank goodness for the Nick Lowe-penned pick-me-up ‘Far Celestial Shore’ immediately after: “There’s a place I know for certain, I will someday see / When I lay down my burden and look on Galilee”.

One True Vine doesn’t quite surpass the high benchmark set by their previous partnership, but you can’t really go wrong with Jeff Tweedy’s delicate touch and a voice as exquisite as Mavis Staples’. The pair have delivered another outstanding set.

Article published in The Brag, 13th July 2013

Bliss n Eso: Live Review

BLISS N ESO, YELAWOLF, PEZ
Enmore Theatre
Thursday 4 July

Peace, love, unity and a whole lotta effin’ n jeffin’ was the order of the night – and the young Enmore Theatre crowd lapped it up. A smiley Pez dished out the good vibes as he performed his funky new single but was soon overshadowed by a much more memorable and aggressive performer. Shady Records-signed Alabama rapper Yelawolf “still don’t give a fuck” and only once acted like he did, when he removed his shoes for a spot of crowd-surfing . After spraying the fans at the front with his beer he peeled off his black leather jacket (and footwear) and jumped head-first into a sea of raised arms. A medley of rap and rock classics including favourites by the Beastie Boys, Nirvana and AC/DC was an obvious but effective way of geeing everyone up.

The trailer for new album Circus In The Sky and impatient chants of “B and E!” before it preceded Bliss N Eso’s grand entrance. Flanking DJ Izm in the centre of the stage, the pair worked their way through ‘Woodstock 2008’, ‘Family Affair’ and the Bluejuice-sampling ‘Act Your Age’. Bliss beatboxed and Izm, christened ‘the Moroccan Lamb Shank’ by his bandmate, treated us an interlude of crabbing and hands-free scratching. Most of the crowd were too young to join in when he urged a sing-along to Biz Markie’s “Just A Friend”. Just as well, really, because a more seasoned audience would have realised that Bliss N Eso were pulling every old trick out of the bag.

The fans obligingly hollered back to Eso’s “you’re fucking beautiful, Sydney” and were taken in by the trio’s overcooked good-to-be-back-in-our-hometown shtick. The call-and-response to “there’s a party over here, fuck you over there!” nearly sent the beardy boys in the Bintang vests over the edge.

Some of the delivery was repetitive and soon became tiresome. Not every song needed a cheesy, rehearsed double-act intro and too many times were literal interpretations of the imagery and lyrics beamed onto the big screen. They’re veterans now and although they’ve learnt how to work a crowd, Bliss N Eso also have a good body of well-known material to their name. I enjoyed myself, but I was also left with the impression that Bliss N Eso didn’t need to try so hard.

Kings Of Leon: Live Review

KINGS OF LEON, THE GROWL
Enmore Theatre
Wednesday 20 November

What happened to the menace, the danger, the don’t-give-a-Tennessee-toss snarls? Kings Of Leon dutifully worked through 20 or so of their classics and anthems-in-the-making from new album Mechanical Bull. They rocked the crowd — with songs like these they couldn’t fail — it just wasn’t very rock‘n’roll.

There’s not much to say about Perth’s The Growl. They ticked the blues-rock box but showed nothing to suggest that they will break out of triple-j’s playlists to inhabit the same universally appreciated space that KOL find themselves in in 2013. And given the Followill family’s popularity, you can’t blame them for cashing in, for plastering the place with banners for tour sponsor Klipsch speakers. Hey, it was a novelty to see them do their thing in a space barely big enough for 1,600 people when they can pack out fields 100 times as big.

But that was the problem. When you’ve headlined Glastonbury, perhaps it’s hard to get yourself up for a show like this. It was billed as an intimate gig, yet the Enmore is hardly the best place to get up close and personal with the truest fans. So the result, from opener ‘Supersoaker’ to unsurprising curtain-closer ‘Sex On Fire’, wasn’t unentertaining — far from it. It just lacked any sense of being special. There was none of Caleb’s aggression during his ‘I really don’t want to be here’ phase or the unbounded enthusiasm with which the band toured the first two albums. On bassist Jared’s birthday, he couldn’t have looked more uninterested.

But let’s accentuate the positives. Caleb’s voice was sensational and no hit was left out. The handful of songs from the new LP sounded great and went down well, in particular album highlight ‘Rock City’ (“I was running through the desert/I was looking for drugs”) and the 80s FM sound of ‘Temple’. It feels like a new happy stage for the Kings of Leon, with fewer rows and their feet eased off the gas a little. And who can blame them for wanting that?

Article published in The Brag, 27th November 2013

Cody ChesnuTT: Live Review

CODY CHESNUTT, NGAIIRE
Metro Theatre
Saturday 19 October

When it comes to his output, Cody ChesnuTT doesn’t like to look back. Yet, playing tracks almost exclusively from his 2012 album Landing On A Hundred, ChesnuTT managed to rewind the clock 40 years.

From the average sound quality to the fact that the star was signing merchandise by the time we’d reached the exit, this was about as close to a 70s soul revue as you can get before being forced to use the word ‘tribute’.

Wearing a lion on each shoulder and a large bow in her hair, Sydney soulstress Ngaiire, in support, had turned the African up to 11. Inviting sartorial comparisons to Erykah Badu seemed dangerous but aurally she is closer to Little Dragon’s Yukimi Nagano. A sweet voice and the spacey soul of ‘Dirty Hercules’ certainly deems debut LP Lamentations worthy of closer inspection.

ChesnuTT’s be-suited four-piece band warmed the crowd with the Blaxploitation funk of ‘That’s Still Mama’, and the Atlanta-born star ­­− sporting a bushy beard and his now standard military helmet − provided a glimpse of his vocal ability on the smooth ‘Til I Met Thee’. A slow acapella intro of “I used to smoke crack back in the day / I used to gamble rent money and lose” began a lengthy version of ‘Everybody’s Brother’ and repeated crowd choruses of “No turning back”.

Unusually, it was a love song that ignited the party. Performing ‘Love Is More Than A Wedding Day’, ChesnuTT found his groove. He told how the lyrics came to him when his 12-year marriage hit a rocky patch, part singing, part preaching. All at once he evoked Marvin (voice), Otis (energy) and Al Green (delivery).

Notable in it’s absence from the encore was ChesnuTT’s only proper hit, ‘The Seed’, but the sweetness with which he explained why he couldn’t perform it was refreshing, as he ad-libbed “Thank you for allowing me to grow as an artist”. Cody ChesnuTT’s perspective on life may have changed but he remains an eccentrically captivating talent.

Article published in The Brag, 25th October 2013

The Handsome Family – Wilderness: Album Review

THE HANDSOME FAMILY
Wilderness
Spunk
3/5

There are many husband and wife duos making music – particularly folk and country music – but few are as consistent as Brett and Rennie Sparks. The couple celebrated their 20-plus years together on 2009’s Honey Moon and now return with Wilderness, in which they spin yarns relating to all sorts of fauna. Every track is named after a creature – this album has ‘Frogs’, ‘Flies’, ‘Eels’ and ‘Owls’.

Recorded at their home in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Wilderness very much sticks to the bluesy Americana blueprint of The Handsome Family’s previous output. Again the surreal words are the star of the show. Rennie Sparks has a way of poetically immersing you in her narrative as Brett Sparks’ inviting baritone puts a big bear-like arm around your shoulder and guides you ever deeper into the fairytale.

It’s also partly down to the attention to detail which these unsettling stories are given. ‘Caterpillars’ tells the Lynch-ian tale of Sylvia, who was struck by lightning and subsequently cocooned in silk by the titular creatures. Her appearance is painted in vivid detail: “She wore dark-tinted spectacles, several fur-lined capes / Three pairs of velvet gloves, a veil of dotted swiss”. Elsewhere we become acquainted with “Lovely Mary Sweeney, the famous window-smasher” and Granny Green, who can speak to the birds. These characters and more are brought to life against an atmospheric backdrop of lullaby melodies played out on honky-tonk piano, pedal steel and fiddle.

Wilderness is charming, but exactly what we have come to expect from The Handsome Family. Existing fans will enjoy it without hailing it as a spectacular addition to the duo’s sound body of work.

Article published in The Brag, 10th June 2013
Photo by PeterJ1977

How To Light Up A Sydney Harbour Bridge

Those who live in Sydney might have noticed that the hulking mass of steel joining Milsons Point to Millers Point has been glowing in pretty, dancing colours over the last week or so.

The Sydney Harbour Bridge has been decked out like a gigantic prop on the set of Tron for the first time, as part of Vivid Sydney; a 53,000 tonne structure, in all its glo-sticked glory.

But the bridge’s new look is not just a pretty addition to the already pretty-nice vista from the western side of the bridge. It is also the world’s largest real-time interactive light display.

Who dunnit?

The project, Colour The Bridge, comes largely down to a visionary chap called Iain Reed and his team of staff at 32 Hundred Lighting. His job is basically every Christmas-loving Dad’s fantasy: he was appointed Technical Director for the Sydney Harbour Bridge New Year’s Eve fireworks display in 2005, and fancied “playing on the Old Girl” some more as part of Vivid.

The tech nerds/Daft Punk enthusiasts over at Intel have sponsored Vivid Sydney for the past three years; they’re the ones responsible for one of last year’s highlights, the interactive music and light installation projected on the MCA. Intel provided the computer power for the bridge — and Martin Bevz, Reed’s go-to software developer, custom designed the user interface. “The public interaction is one of the things that’s evolved over the years,” Bevs says. “It’s so much more fun and engaging if people can actually have a go, and control what they see.”

What’s in it?

Lots. There is lots in it.

• 100,800 individual red, green and blue LED lights, which shine together a bit like on an old fashioned TV set, to make any colour you fancy.
• 2000 one-metre hi-resolution LED tubes and 140 high-power LED cans, housing that fat load of fairy lights.
• 8.5 kilometres of category six data cable (or blue networking cable to you and me), 3.5 kilometres of custom-built CEEform cable and 800 metres of three-phase cable, connecting it all together.
• Another kilometre of fibre optic cable, linking to the processing units.
• 20,000 industrial cable ties that secure the lights to the bridge itself.

Will it kill us all?

The power rating of the super-efficient LED lights used for the installation is just 33,000 watts.

That’s equivalent to only 550 standard 60W bulbs. Or, around half of that required by the white floodlights that light the bridge for the rest of the year. More light = less energy/better for the environment… Go figure.

How did it get up there?

The whole shebang had to be transported – light by light, cable by cable – on the backs of Reed’s ten-strong team of workers.

Carrying 30kg backpacks, each member of the team climbed up and down the bridge’s 1,400 steps roughly six times a day, six days a week; that’s around four million steps ascended and descended throughout the course of the installation.

Which would have got them to the top of over 1000 Eiffel Towers – and down again.

“Sometimes you’d have to go all the way to the top [of the arch], then all the way north, then all the way back south to check something, then all the way north again because that’s where we operated from most of the time,” says Adam Bursill, head of lighting at 32 Hundred and foreman for the installation team, when I cruelly ask him to relive the experience. “It got very exhausting.”

What’s it like to play with?

Having invited me to the Intel control kiosk at Luna Park, Reed lets me pick colours for each of the eight sections of the bridge, and choose a scrolling process. (‘Draw’ is the most impressive).

It’s excellent fun – like tackling the ultimate colouring-in book, but without that horrific stress of staying in the lines — and as a queue of families gathers outside awaiting the 6pm switch-on, there is a bit of a party atmosphere in the kiosk. Competition winners have been the first to turn on the lights on previous evenings, but I’m sharing the room with Dominic Knight from 702 ABC Sydney, who flicks the switch with his chosen colour scheme.

When beckoned in, wide-eyed kids and competitive dads fight for ownership of the controls. Reed proudly tells an intrigued older couple, “This is my project”.

Can I have a go please?

Until Monday June 10, yes — you just rock up, and join the queue. Reed won’t confirm whether plans are already in place for the project to be brought back next year, but judging by the reaction of the crowds, it’s a safe bet it will. I ask if the lights will be kept in storage — keeping in mind they have been designed and built for the Sydney Harbour Bridge only. A cryptic “You never know” is all he offers.

Article published on Junkee.com, 5th June 2013

Empire Of The Sun: Live Review

EMPIRE OF THE SUN, HIGH HIGHS
Sydney Opera House
Thursday May 30

How could High Highs, with just a string of fairy lights adorning their instruments, compete with the night’s headliner? They couldn’t, despite having a nice way with an airy melody. The trouble was not only that the three-piece Sydney band lacked a significant production budget and fan base, but there is also nothing to distinguish them from a raft of superior sound-alike acts.

A quick bar visit confirmed that many of the audience were in a festival spirit and insanely excited about hearing new material from Empire Of The Sun. At that moment the Sydney Opera House seemed like a strange place for the gig. Minutes later, when Luke Steele rose from beneath the stage wearing full metallic Emperor regalia and fist held aloft, flanked by a drummer in a centurion helmet and a bassist in MC Hammer’s trousers, the venue made perfect sense: this was choreographed, costumed theatre. It was designed as a striking spectacle more than a listening party.

Which is just as well, as of the six songs from new album Ice On The Dune premiered, none were memorable except set closer ‘Alive’, and that is probably because it has been banged to death on TV show trailers. It’s enough to say that there has been no radical departure from the previous album’s ‘80s synth-pop.

But this takes nothing away from the entertainment value of the hour-long show even if it was all a little kitsch (the obviously pre-planned guitar smash was, maybe, a bit try-hard). In Nick Littlemore’s absence – a detail that will have disappointed the pumped Pnau fan I spoke to earlier – Steele held the audience’s attention throughout. Mind you, he did have significant help from some fun retro-futuristic visuals and four eccentrically costumed dancers who, for the show’s most brilliantly camp moment, strummed flashing pink double-neck guitars in sync to ‘We Are The People’ while dressed like the troupe from Kylie Minogue’s ‘Can’t Get You Out Of My Head’ vid.

Article published in The Brag, 10th June 2013

Masta Ace: Interview

Telling Stories

Influential Brooklyn rapper Masta Ace’s last album MA Doom: Son Of Yvonne opens with a biographical skit where his 12-year-old self flicks through his mother’s collection of ‘70s soul records: Ohio Players, Curtis Mayfield, Al Green. It paints a vivid and accurate picture of Duval Clear’s (Ace’s birth name) earliest musical experiences.

“My mother was just really into her music,” he says. “Earth, Wind And Fire were her favourites. Those were the records that were always on – those were the records that played in the background to my childhood. There are certain records that can transport you to a time and place. We would pick a record and take it over to my friend Brian’s house – we had a little DJ setup there.”

Throughout the rest of that highly personal album, Ace says some things he wished he had a chance to discuss with his recently departed mother directly. “Writing that album was like a therapy. It took me back to a time when my mother and grandmother were alive. It kind of bought them back to life.”

That LP, released in 2012, came a full quarter-century after Masta Ace’s recording debut on the Juice Crew’s posse cut ‘The Symphony’, produced by super-producer Marley Marl. Even next to such luminaries as Big Daddy Kane and Kool G Rap, the then 21-year-old Ace’s easy flow marks him out as an MC of particular skill.

“I met Marley Marl at a rap contest that I won in 1986. The first prize was six hours studio time with him but it wasn’t until spring of 1988 that I got to cash in my prize. So I got my studio time and he liked what I had laid down on my demo and he decided to make me a part of his In Control album.

“I learned from him a lot about how to use the studio, about production and sound. I watched him mix the LL Cool J album Mama Said Knock You Out. I watched a lot of the tricks he used to make the bass sound heavier and all those things.”

In the years between, Masta Ace, sometimes joined by different crews, has yielded seven albums of varying degrees of success. Many of these could be described as concept albums, including 2001’s critically championed Disposable Arts, which follows a young man’s release from prison and subsequent enrolment in the Institute of Disposable Arts. Bringing scenarios and characters to life through his lyrics is something Masta Ace excels at. Eminem, in his 2008 autobiography The Way I Am, praises Ace for his “amazing storytelling skills” and “vivid thoughts”.

I suggest that hiding behind a character allows Ace the freedom he needs to say things he might not be able to say otherwise. “I like to hide behind a character – that’s exactly what it is. I get to escape being myself by being this character on the record and I can get my message across without being preachy.” And how does he feel about taking time to make interesting, storyboarded albums in a landscape of sub-standard mixtapes and single track, shuffle-setting consumption? “I’m happy that cats take the short cut to throw things together because it makes my albums stand out more. I haven’t heard one artist in particular that is striving to put out proper crafted albums but there are artists that I like what they’re doing musically, like Joey Badass and Jay Electronica.”

Looking back on his 25 years in hip hop, Masta Ace is happy with his lot even if his talent maybe suggests him deserving of more. “I feel like it’s gone the way it was meant to go,” he concludes. “I’m happy with my contribution to the game – whether millions know about it or not, that’s beside the point. If the fans acknowledge my contribution, then I’m comfortable with that.”

Article published in The Brag, 3rd June 2013
Photo by Iris Celine