How Context Creates Creativity, Mura Masa Reflects On The Creative Decisions That Have Shaped His Career

Across his over half decade tenure as one of the globes most sought over producers, Mura Masa developed a name for himself as an artist that is truly innovative. He’s an artist that is able to be undeniably boundary pushing while standing at the top of streaming and commercial charts. Ahead of his massive Splendour In The Grass sideshows, we were fortunate enough to chat to the seminal producer about the trajectory of his career so far. 

After growing up quietly in Guernsey, Mura Masa began gathering the attention of ears in the producer Soundcloud era seven years ago. From Kanye West and Childish Gambino edits, emerged a distinct, synth and pop driven sound, underpinned by metallic synthesisers and chipmunk vocals. After packing together certified internet hits Lovesick, Firefly with Nao and Are U There? on his 2015 EP Someday Somewhere, he turned to his debut self-titled record.

“7 or 8 years ago I would have just turned 18, I was at university studying English Literature,” he describes the context surrounding his Soundcloud prominence.  

“I went through my first big break up, as you do at that age. It was a magical time on the platform. People were competing for ears basically. Yeezus had come out a few years prior to that and that was a big inspiration. More than anything I was really just finding my feet and that was a really good time for experimentation and finding interesting ways to create music.

“It felt like on Soundcloud everyone was looking at each other and trying to outdo each other. That sense of friendly competition drove a lot of really interesting electronic music at the time.” 

What resulted was his most successful commercial project to date, which now presents as a time capsule for a pivotal moment in electronic dance music. It brought the sounds from the Soundcloud era to the undisputed mainstream, with features including Bonzai, A$AP Rocky and Charli XCX. 

“It was a mission statement of what I was doing up until that point,” he states, agreeing with the idea that the project has manifested into a reflective time-piece.

“I wasn’t viewing it as a grandiose statement at the time, I was just trying to summarise what I was attempting to do. Looking back it's a cool artefact of what kind of sound was bouncing around at that time. It’s definitely a bit of a time capsule of that moment that those Soundcloud sounds were trending more mainstream.”

“Part of the intention with that record was getting it into the hands of people who weren’t big Soundcloud heads. It was an important part of my journey, crossing over from one side to the other. I really love that record. It reminds me of a really fun time in my early days.”

Electronic music producers are often pigeon held to the idea that they just make pop records. Mura Masa actively rejected this idea with his 2020 follow up to his debut record R.Y.C. The album saw the producer delve deeply into his songwriting repertoire, away from the traditional electronic infusion that fans had come to know from him. 

“It manifested a retaking of ownership of my music, telling people if you think you know what to expect from me then you’re probably wrong,” he states on the project’s ethos. 

“It’s a funny album because it was not what anybody wanted to hear from me. If you talk to a lot of long time fans of mine where you get a really split opinion on the record. When you’ve had a successful first album one of the choices was trying to do the same thing again but bigger and build on it, but I think that’s a trap door.”

Reflecting on it two years later, he proudly ponders that the decision to fully explore his creative ambitions was the correct choice. One where the validation received from 2020s R.Y.C would always be internal.

“That was an important part in taking such a big bold step forward sonically. Accepting early on that this one was kind of me and I really love it. I still really love that album. It will get its flowers one day. It was an interesting left turn and definitely what it says about me as an artist is that you might get anything. I really enjoy having that as a kind of statement about me.”

Since then, the world has come full circle. Where Soundcloud dominated music discovery in the mid 2010s, similar, snippet focussed algorithmic titans are dictating how people are discovering music now. Whether TikTok or Spotify, musicians are utilising platforms to create fruitful pop music, pushing the boundaries of traditional music consumption and formats. Emerging from a period of pause into this bright bubbly context triggered a spur of inspiration for Mura Masa in creating his forthcoming record, demon time, which lands on the 16th of September.

“During the period of lockdown’s and COVID there was a lot of reflecting, introspection and emotional music on what it was like being alone. There were a few pop albums that came out that were very slow moving and were kind of more emotionally driven. Everyone was really lonely. I wanted to jump the gun and predict what it would sound like when we get out of that. What will the world sound like when people are rediscovering how to have fun and inject some mischief into their lives?”

“As far as TikTok, it's just the newest form of music discovering snippets of music online and loving them and not necessarily knowing where they’ve come from. Then digging in deep that way. That’s definitely a conscious driver on the album. I talk about this with PinkPantheress a lot. If the medium that we are consuming music is based on 15-30 second snippets, how do you change the nature or structure of what you’re doing to fit that?”

Mura Masa is entirely aware of trends occurring, and does not pose them as a negative or positive on the grander scheme of the music industry. He accredits most of the knowledge he has gathered in this area of musical consumption to his good friend and now frequent collaborator PinkPantheress. He produced her seminal hit Just For Me, and she recently appeared on the albums first single bbycakes alongside Lil Uzi Vert and Shygirl.

“Hanging out with her has been very enlightening. She’s 20, the age I would have been when I was doing all the really exciting stuff in the early days. It’s great to see someone at that age who is so attuned culturally to what is going on with popular music. Aside from anything else she’s an amazing songwriting and producer and musician. It’s been really fun spending lots of fun with her and getting her opinions on what's been going on. It’s been a really big re-invigorator for me.”

demon time is an exploration of intrinsic fun. It is a soundtrack for youth and people experiencing the beautiful moments that feature in late night escapades for the very first time. Dance music needs to be experienced, it needs to be lived through deeply over periods of time. He quotes this as the main inspiration for the record, “how do we make music for midnight to 6am fuckery basically."

“Making mistakes, not necessarily regretting them, meeting new people, trying to get to know them etc. Things that have not been able to happen over the past couple of years that have been boiling over. 

“We’ve been saving up a lot of energy. I was at Glastonbury over the weekend and you could feel it in the air that there was weird electricity. People really aren’t taking for granted being in situations like that. There's much more surrender to the idea of just feeling joy and having a little bit of fun, even at the cost of being sensible or things like that.”

Now he turns to a massive Australian tour alongside Australian based internet breaker daine. The show’s kick off at 170 Russell in Melbourne on the 22nd of July and Saturday the 23rd of July at the Enmore Theatre in Sydney. In the midst of it all, he’ll also be performing at Splendour in The Grass.

When asked about the feeling of performing shows with a batch of unreleased music, he states that is in fact quite anxiety inducing. “It is quite stressful. It’s months long, foreplay effectively. You know what’s coming but you can’t quite show everyone it yet. I do play a heap of new music at the shows though. When I come to Australia I’ll be playing lots of unreleased stuff. It’s always interesting because you’re prescribing something to the crowd and this is the first context they’ll hear it.”

“Everyone engages in music so differently so they might want to just immediately dance when they hear it or they might just want to sit back, listen and observe. I try to do it as much as possible to expose people to the music as much as possible and give them something special if they're a big fan of mine. I open the set with an unreleased song so I come out the gate screaming of unreleased stuff.”

You can grab tickets to Mura Masa’s Splendour In The Grass Melbourne sideshow's HERE