Q&A – 2000 Trees 2022 Artists: Masca – August 2022

Hello! You are playing on the new and improved Forest stage on Saturday. Have you seen the new stage yet?

Tina: No, we haven’t. We have only just got here, so we’ve come to do this and then I think we are going to go for a little wander after.

Jack: We’ve literally just set the tent up. I did see a sneaky little photo that someone sent, and it does look really cool.

What can the audience expect from your set on Saturday?

Tina: A bit of pop; a little bit of heavy. Melodies, harmonies…

Jack: Yeah; we like to cut the boundary between rock and pop really. We enjoy good melodies but with a fairly heavy twist. It’s not out and out pop, but we like to borrow from both.

Me: Are there any other bands that you want to check out this weekend?

Tina: Yeah, there’s loads. We missed Tigercub, which I’m a bit sad about. I also want to see The Wytches, Nova Twins…

Jack: We saw Nova Twins at Glastonbury a couple of weeks ago. We kind of went along thinking that we’d check them out, and we absolutely loved it. It was so good.

Tina: Idles…

Jack: Yeah, Idles are really good.

When did you form the band?

Tina: We started gigging last year in a lockdown kind of way; seated and online gigs. We’ve been writing for a couple of years now, but obviously we couldn’t release or gig very much during lockdown. Summer has been the first opportunity that we’ve had to really release stuff and play some proper gigs.

Everything has been very different since Covid hit in 2020, so it has been rather disruptive for the music industry in general. Was it tricky to stay creative throughout lockdowns and how did it affect your songwriting process?

Jack: We live together too; we’re a couple. We were kind of forced together by lockdown.

Tina: We weren’t forced together. We wanted to be together…

Jack: I mean, some bands are forced apart, but we were happily forced together.

Tina: We were writing all the time, so we ended up writing about two albums’ worth of material. We had just recorded an EP. We’ve been doing this EP for what feels like ages now, but we haven’t even had the chance to release it yet. We’re actually ready to put some stuff out and then do some new material.

You’ve released a couple of singles so far this year, and you’re releasing your EP, Sink, later this year. Can you give us a little bit of insight into what to expect from the new EP?

Tina: It’s early days stuff. It’s a little bit of everything and it doesn’t really fit in a very neat box. There’s some quite heavy stuff, and some quite poppy stuff. It’s just a range of songs that are very us. Each song is completely different.

Jack: I think we’ve got quite a wide range of influences really, so this EP for us is about trying out a few different styles. Each of the tracks are quite different from each other. However; hopefully they sound like a cohesive batch.

Tina: I think that they do. You can tell that it’s us in each song.

Which is your favourite track from the EP to perform live?

Tina: I love That’s Not Me, with our bassist, Ben. We’ve now got a bassist, and this will be his second show, so that’s quite exciting for us because we’ve been a two piece for a while, but we never wanted to be a two-piece. It’s very hard to find band members in lockdown. Now we’ve got some gig experience out of the way and we’ve found Ben, we’re going to see if he wants to carry on with us.

Jack: Hopefully we can snare him…

Tina: I actually really love what he plays on that song. It’s a song that we couldn’t really play as a two-piece, because we recorded our EP originally with a keyboard player, who is now on tour with another band, so it’s been a bit of a tricky one over the last six months. That’s the one that I am really looking forward to playing.

You dressed up as cigarette packets for your Unsure video. How did that come about and was it strange walking around a town filming dressed up as that?

Jack: It was definitely strange, yeah. It was really difficult to walk in as well.

Tina: You can’t really move your legs more than about half a foot.

Jack: They come up to your knees, so it’s really tricky.

Tina: We went for a coffee one morning, and we are really busy, so we do have to make time to think about ideas and concepts for things like music videos. We were having a coffee and thinking about what the song is about, which is toxic relationships. It’s not about smoking…

Jack: But people always have a toxic relationship with smoking too, don’t they?

Tina: It’s about wanting something so badly, and it just not being good for you. The big boxes kind of represent how awkward and imposing these relationships are on our lives; they get in the way. Quite literally, those boxes were getting in the way. That was the thought process behind it. There was even one part where we had to go and ramble over some rocks to get to the first story of a derelict building, and it was actually quite difficult.

Jack: If that doesn’t come across, in the video it looks like we just climb across some rocks and found this little building part of the way out to sea; but in reality, it took about half an hour across some quite tricky terrain for about 20 seconds worth of video.

If you could perform at any venue in the world, where would it be?

Jack: Wembley. I’ve always had a bit of a joke with my younger brother; the first one to play Wembley wins. I don’t think either of us are anywhere near playing Wembley, but I’d be lying if I said that it wasn’t my goal.

Tina: I would love to play Glastonbury, because I love Glastonbury. To play it would just be next level.

Jack: I think realistically, I’d rather play the Pyramid stage at Glastonbury, than Wembley.

Tina: I wouldn’t even care if it was the Pyramid stage. I’d love to play anywhere there. I’d love to play the Park stage.

What are your plans as a band for the rest of this year?

Tina: We’re going to release this EP. We’ve got the next single coming out in about three weeks’ time and then we’ve got a couple more singles out. The EP will probably be out in about October.

Jack: And then we’re going to record an album when we get some time to finish off the songs. We’ve got all of the unfinished material, it’s just that now we’ve got to finish it.

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