cozymason pt. II

cozymason is having a busy month. The Austin-based DJ walks a bass-boosted balance beam between the spotlight and the underground, rocking well known venue stages while still finding time to play and promote shows in unique locations throughout the city. If you tuned in to our first article on this precocious selector, you know he’s got some things to say about music in Austin, the sounds that stir him and his path through the pandemonium. He’ll take the stage again this Thursday as Ben Jester opens the evening at Stubb’s Indoors. Until then, and without further ado, cozymason:

Culture Capital: I saw you texting the hell out of people before your event. What are you taking about what you don’t like in the process here and changing it or using it to boost you?

cozymason: So I recently threw an event that was kind of a life-long goal of mine since I was 15. I threw a warehouse party playing all electronic music from like 2009-2013 - the era I was coming up in electronic music. I wanted to market it differently so I hung up a poster with no info on the event. No artists, no DJs, no address, no nothing except a phone number and old black and white photos of DJs. It got the buzz going. Within the first 24 hrs of putting up posters I got over 100 phone calls. I was responding to people individually through this alter ego. There was a whole story behind it and you had to listen to this voicemail and blah blah blah. It gave me a different way to market the event where I could build mystery around it. Myself included, when I see another event advertised I scroll right past it. I’m interested in what I’m interested in. 

Everyone’s taught some form of marketing cause everyone’s trying to build a brand for themselves. Whether that’s being a model and endorsing products on the internet or being an artist and endorsing yourself so that people are drawn to you so they’ll listen to your music so they’ll come to your shows which will therefore pay your bills. Everyone is trying to find a way to market themselves. If you go back in the day fifty years ago people were getting paid to do this job. No one knew how to market anything. You look at advertisements and people still thought smoking cigarettes was healthier if it had a filter on it. Nowadays there’s an over indulgence of information. Same thing with this city and events. It’s the constant bombardment of the same thing with the same people doing the same shit. That’s why this last year..I didn’t start going out less, I just became more selective with what I was doing. 

I got tired of seeing the same people at the same events. I was like, ‘wait, this is all time added up that I could be using to spend on my own craft, doing my own passions and finding a way to introduce a new way of doing things. Not on a huge scale, but on a small scale. 

I want to shout one person out while I’m talking about this. Isaac from 1222 Productions. I don’t know if you heard about the bridge party this last weekend but he did the tunnel parties, he did the party at Zilker in the middle of the night over at the gazebo on the lake. I just ran into him two years ago. He wasn’t like a steady party guy I didn’t see him at a lot of events. Then these things started happening and I started paying attention and finally went to this party and was blown away.

The way he does his party is he shows up in a uhaul to this random location, you get the address two hours before the party starts and he sets up in these random spots. This past one was incredible it was at the old Montopolis bridge which is decommissioned now that they’re doing all that construction on 183 area and Airport blvd. [It’s] one of the most picturesque, legendary bridges in Austin. You put in your email through an instagram link .

It’s not Vibe Vessel labelling themselves as legitimizing the underground, which is a bullshit term inherently. They just did a warehouse event for the first time in months and that’s their business model and that’s fine. That’s what was so..it almost put a tear in my eye man cause I was like this is what we’ve been fucking missing. Me and Charles (Mxxn) had a really deep discussion about it while we were there. We were both aghast like, ‘Yo, this is it! This is why we do what we do.’ No venue telling us to do this that and the other, there’s no cops. 

CC: That’s why yours worked too?

C: With this party we just did we threw a ticket price on it and alcohol was provided, you’re getting your money’s worth, but we had strict guidelines. This is gonna be a night where we’re only playing music from a certain era. That was special because, you go to plenty of “themed nights” where it’s house music or minimal or techno and yea those are great but it’s all new music. You can’t really throw down an all throwback set. I think it’s about recapturing an era without getting stuck in the past. 

For example, Dim Mak. Back when they were very young, 2009-2010, they used to throw these ragers in LA in warehouses. They were playing all these housey, electro-clash music like Justice and Bloody Beetroots and Steve Aoki’s old shit. That was such a fucking era man. That’s what I tried to recapture with this party is just a warehouse with good sound, bumping sound system, close enough so people aren’t having to drive 30 fucking minutes to find a warehouse to party in, and no one gave us any shit at all.