MARLA MASE
Marla Mase is an innovative, unstoppable artistic force. A dynamic performer who's built a formidable career creating immersive entertainment experiences in all manner of the arts for almost three decades, she didn't emerge from her musical cocoon until the early 2000s. Since then, she's performed to rapturous audiences from the Bowery to Beijing and released multiple LPs. Her two latest EPs, STRIPPED.DOWN. and Truth Comes Down, reveal differing sides of the same coin.
STRIPPED.DOWN. is all-acoustic; not only is the instrumentation stripped to it's acoustic heart, the songs dig down to an emotional core that strikes a raw nerve, and Truth Comes Down is a visceral, electric rock and roll snapshot of life through an unblinking filter.
"I think of myself as a writer first and everything I do stems from the words. I let the songs and stories dictate the way they want to be presented. Some of these songs were written a while back but they are all coming to have new meaning in the context of what's going on today. It’s like they keep getting more and more relevant. It sort of freaks me out that things I wrote about over 10 years ago are happening now. I'm not psychic, but… "
Her post-pandemic, pre-apocalyptic grooves sit just slightly on this side of disturbing and that side of fun but are all unflinchingly magnetic and unapologetically addictive.
“[Mase] combines the raw emotion of Patti Smith, the spoken-song brilliance of Lou Reed, the musical eclecticism of Frank Zappa, and the fearless performance style of Iggy Pop.”
— CultureClash
“Words are a big thing for Marla Mase. For her, music counterbalances and complements the vignettes that swirl around in her head. The brief accounts of fear, the blues, anxiety or the hope of fulfilling dreams, of acknowledging the inner sexual beast — these are the themes that drive her. Marla is living in her own skin and wants those who listen to her music to be comfortable in theirs as well.. [Mase's music] is a little tribal, a little rock, a little jazzy, a little bluesy, a little funky, but most of all cathartic...her lyrics, whether sung or spoken, are brilliantly backed by The True Groove All-Stars.”
— Huffington Post