Madame Masc
Design, 2021, Personal
I have had a desire to make a vinyl record my whole life but sadly I cannot sing or play anything to save my life. During the pandemic, I decided to fire up Garage Band and start putting all the R&B acapellas and MF DOOM beats I had been harvesting all my life to use. The idea came to life after DOOM passed and like he had created this persona based on a Marvel villain, I wanted to do the same, and who else would be more fitting to play off than the villainess Madame Masque? Obviously since I don’t like lawsuits the name had to change and since I am a male making music behind female vocals, my best friend Diana suggested I change it to “Masc”.
The album cover was designed one night when I just started cutting up DOOM masks in Photoshop and laying them over black and white photos of the singers I was using vocals of on the project. My desired outcome was trying to make something that felt like DOOM’s Viktor Vaughn album and sorta said “femme fatale” I landed on this one photo of Coko (of SWV) from her first solo album. I then I blew it up showing the moire pattern and halftone screen and added the mask to the image. The idea to make it gold was based on the Marvel villainess the name reference to, but also inspired by the debut album of artist Santigold (the one where she’s puking gold glitter), which was similar to Madvilliany’s cover homaged Madonna’s debut in it’s art directon. In the end I created this look and feel of a grainy mashed up cover, which was very true to the music I ended up making.
The project was very fun to make and of the thirty-ish songs I had made, 10 were selected to build out this Hip Hop/Soul revenge plot I had conjured up in my head. By summer I had finished the project and got to designing the packaging of the album. I decided to do a small run of casettes that I sent to family, friends and clients. I made one 12” vinyl and 7” with the first song I had made, “Use Your Heart”.
After sending the album out to friends and sharing with the world, the reception was positive and I even had pals asking if there would be more. So due to the “demand”, in the fall, I decided to create a follow-up, Madame Masc II: Tomboy Terror. This release was a little more thought out and I got a little more creative adding in clips from cartoons or movies into it to help tell a loose narrative about “one’s authentic self” . I also decided not to tie myself down to only MF DOOM beats but anything he had been featured on.
Now I am commited to this project, there will be more as this has been a fun way to create things using while paying homage to all the things I love and just a different form of expression than I have been used to.
To hear the project click here.
