Mason Jones
A San Francisco, CA-based musician, artist, and writer, Mason has been active in the independent music world for over 30 years. Beginning with experimental cassette-culture appearances in the 1980s, Mason has recorded and performed with numerous bands and collaborators.
Beginning with a string of albums under the name Trance from 1988-1995, that name was retired and Mason's songs and albums began appearing under his own name. His music has a wide range, from noisy experimental guitar work to spacey electronics and psychedelic rock. Mason founded the improvisational psych-rock band SubArachnoid Space and led the group from 1996 until 2003, releasing 9 albums before moving on.
Mason is a member of the quartet Collision Stories, an experimental group mixing many instruments and ideas. Mason's primary current project is Numinous Eye, a free-form noisy, psychedelic rock guitar-drum duo. For Numinous Eye, Mason brings in various drummers depending on the circumstances and availability. His noise project, We've Come For What's Ours, has released several limited-edition albums, and Terminal Stress is a more recent electronic project. The band Noise Birds with Tokyo's Suishou no Fune is currently recording and planning performances. Mason's collaborations over the years have involved Makoto Kawabata, Blue Sabbath Black Cheer, Instagon, Hijokaidan, Seiichi Yamamoto, and many more.
While running the independent label Charnel Music during the 1990s, Mason released over 30 albums by artists including Crash Worship, Pain Teens, Vas Deferens Organization, Angel'in Heavy Syrup, Fushitsusha, Mainliner, and others. The label specialized in working with Japanese artists to give them an audience in the U.S. and Europe, including the release of three compilations, Land of the Rising Noise, with a wide variety of Japanese artists. Under the continued auspices of the Charnel Music name, Mason continues to organize shows and small tours for bands from Japan.
As an artist and designer, Mason has done graphic design for a number of CDs including releases from Charnel Music, Manifold Records, and others, including most of his own albums. He has also designed the covers for a number of books and magazines.
Mason's writing has included countless interviews and record reviews for magazines and web sites including File 13, You Could Do Worse, Industrial Nation, Browbeat, and Ptolemaic Terrascope. He currently contributes reviews primarily to Dusted Magazine online. He has interviewed and written features about bands including Acid Mothers Temple, Angel'in Heavy Syrup, KK Null, Scot Jenerik, Yamamoto Seiichi (Boredoms), Kaneko Jutoku (Kosokuya), Keiji Haino, and many others. He also contributed a section about the Japanese noise underground to the book Japan Edge (Cadence Books, 2000). During the '90s Mason published four issues of the magazine Ongaku Otaku, devoted to covering the Japanese independent music scene. A few of Mason's short works of fiction and miscellaneous non-fiction have been published in magazines such as Enterrupted, Morbid Curiosity, and Cyber-Psycho's A.O.D.
