duggup

Mason Proper are a rather nifty rock band who fired up in around 2004,they released “Olly Oxen Free” free late last year and there are some great songs on it, but “Fog” is the one for me. Sparse, atmospheric and just compelling. The raw guitar notes and the voice that ring out at the start of “Fog” just carry you along and then when the band kicks in at the chorus it really unsettling. I love this one.

I also love this quote from the website…

Four vans destroyed and sold for scrap metal. Five guitar amps crackled, hissed, and went silent, exhaling a final puff of smoke. An irreplacable vintage keyboard face down at the bottom of a flight of stairs, 13 keys cracked and lifted, never to make a sound again.

A string of misfortune seemed to follow the five young men comprising Michigan’s Mason Proper (named for an obscure phrase relating to Freemasonry) last year as they toured in support of their 2007 debut album, There is a Moth in Your Chest. Each time they packed up their belongings to head to another town, they would search their bags and equipment for arcane symbols, unexplained objects, anything that might prove to be evidence of the curse of unluckiness they seemed to be living under. “It was a ritual we took up half-jokingly,” singer and primary songwriter Jonathan Visger said, “but the second part of the joke was always that if we ever found anything, it would certainly explain a lot.

Make sure you check out “Lock and Key” as well. Yummy.

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Websites can be found at http://www.myspace.com/masonproper and http://masonproper.com/