My life had undergone a turbulent shift around April last year. My plans of further working with New York-based artist Mason Taylor for another  interview was put aside. Everything just blew apart. Only today whenI went back to my old account that found this in my mailbox. I was shocked because I was asking Mason Taylor for an essay eleven months ago.  Only that by time he sent it, I was not functional. So here it is. Dug up from my box of memories from last year. Mason Taylor wrote about his music, his band and beyond from last April of 2012. The HTML doesn’t work with my wordpress so I had to strip away the coding. But thank you Mason for your efforts. They are very much appreciated. And I am glad to read about what already happened.

Thanks Jose! I really appreciate you saying that. I just finished a little post for you. I’ve pasted it along with some HTML tags below to hopefully make your life a little easier. Let me know if this works for you!

Mason

Guest Post by Mason Taylor from a’tris “http://www.atrishq.com”

Thanks for having me here, Baxter! I get a lot of requests for interviews, IDs and things but it’s not every day that I get an offer to write a guest post. I really appreciate this opportunity to give back to you and to hopefully create something interested for your readers.

For those of you who may not be familiar with the a’tris name or what my friends and I are up to, I’d encourage you to check out Baxter’s post on us “https://spheremusic.wordpress.com/2011/09/01/finding-clarity-in-the-obtusemason-taylor-describes-atris/“In a nutshell, we are a collective of artists who love alternative music. We make obtuse indie stuff and draw a lot of influence from bands like R.E.M and Radiohead so, if you dig what they’re doing, we hope you’ll enjoy the noise we’re making too.

Over the last seven years or so, the guys and I have released two full-length albums and two EPs “http://www.reverbnation.com/atris” . Last year, we undertook our most daunting challenge yet and set out to create a new song every week. We called this our #songaweek project and used this hashtag on Twitter to keep people updated with our progress. Not content to simply share rough ideas, we endeavored to create fully fleshed out demos of the new material including music video components and custom logos. We wanted our fans and newcomers alike to really be able to go behind the curtain and see what we were thinking and what we were creating. It was crazy stuff, but we had a lot of fun. After the ball dropped in Times Square and this new year was rung in, I wrote a post on the a’tris blogs about the results of our project, which you can read “http://atris.wordpress.com/2012/02/13/updates/“. The main takeaway for us was that, over the course of 2011, we successfully wrote and demoed 22 new songs, over 2 albums’ worth of material.

http://www.atrishq.com/Archives.html

http://atris.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/atris-songaweek-videos-and-logos.png

Now what do we do with all of these new songs? Well, the first challenge an artist faces when putting a record together is sorting through his or her production to find the material that really stands out. While this may sound easy to some, it can be pretty difficult for many artists. Have you ever had trouble deciding which flavor of ice cream you’d like to buy? I always have a hard time settling on a sub sandwich (or grinder for you North Eastern readers). It seems like there’s a bodega on every street corner in New York City and they all offer more choices of combinations than I can count. The problem artists face is not too dissimilar. We all have our favorites, but we have to consider if those favorites work well with the rest of our material. I love chicken salad. I also enjoy jalapeños. I can’t say I like the sound of a jalapeño and chicken salad sandwich. Maybe that’s just me. Fortunately, our fans have made the selection process for our next record a little easier. The #songaweek demos that had the most likes and comments on YouTube are now getting a free pass on to our new album. We think that these songs work really well together. But we’re not content to just release a record of great songs. We want to create experiences. And that will require new material and a lot of studio time which – in turn – will require a lot of capital. The next part of our journey is to create a great product that we can share with you. We’re currently working on the logistics behind that and we hope to have more information to share with you soon.

I recently had a chance to go behind the scenes of one my favorite television shows. The guest who was being taped was a well-known director and I was interested to see what he had to say about his latest film. What stood out to me the most during his extended chat with the host (a good portion of these interviews always hits the cutting-room floor when they air on TV) was that, despite his name and past successes, it took him over five years to get his new movie made and he said he forgot how many studios passed on the project. So I think it’s fair to say that it’s never easy to release an entertainment product, regardless of the medium. With that said, I’ll end this post with something else the director mentioned that really rang true to me too. Regardless of how many countless hours one puts in to a creative work, it’s always worth it in the end. We’re very fortunate to share our art with you. You are the reason that we make it and we’re grateful for your support.

I hope you enjoyed this post and that you’ll reach out to me on Twitter @atris” “http://www.twitter.com/atris” or on the “a’tris blogs” http://atris.wordpress.com“or “Facebook” “http://www.facebook.com/atrismusic”

Mason