Sex Mask Are Playing SXSW
presented by
Masking is the observable discrepancy between underlying preferences and outward behavior.
For example, you may hate a song, but you dance to it anyway because you want the people in this nightclub to think that you’re cool and hip, or perhaps you hate someone’s guts, but you’re kind to them and tell them they smell good because they own the grocery store that you’re a butcher at - and yeah, you grip your cleaver a little tighter every time, but that’s a compensatory impulse.
In the context of sex, I often mask my distaste for it - the smells, the dirt, the juices - yuck - but I tell people that I like it anyway, because that’s the world we live in. In the context of Sex Mask, I don’t have to mask anything, because I like their music, and the world likes it too, that’s why they’re playing our SXSW showcase, and that’s why you’re reading their interview now.
Sex Mask are Ry Gray (vocals/lyrics), Vicente Moncada (drums/production), and Kaya Martin (guitars/synths), and for this interview, we spoke to Ry and Kaya. See them play The Monster Children SXSW Showcase presented by AS Colour on March 17th at Mohawk, Austin, TX.
Kaya Martin: You’re lookin’ fresh, Ry.
Ry Gray: Yeah, I fucking burnt my hair.
KM: Are you drinking a beer right now?
Yeah, it’s 8PM. I’m in Brooklyn, so kind of the reverse of Australian time.
KM: I wish I could drink a beer, I just woke up.
Have you been to the states before?
KM: No, we’ve never played there.
Oh, you’re really going to have a time.
RG: I’ll have to really take control of myself.
KM: What are American bands like? I hear New York has great shows - I hear people really come out and give em the business.
Yeah! People come out, for sure. There are a lot of crossing arms, BBC Dad style, but people are usually down to move.
KM: I mean, I’ve been to America, but not to tour, just to travel.
RG: As a place to travel, I never thought I wanted to go to America, but then this started to happen and I was like, ‘oh, I have a reason to be in America!’ That’s more interesting to me. We’re playing SXSW though, so that’s cool, that’s something I’ve been watching since I was a kid.
You’re in Melbourne, right? Don’t you guys have a SXSW extension type thing down there?
KM: We do, but it’s not defunct. We played that really early on-
RG: And we played it two years in a row, I think.
I’m told by our contributors that Melbourne is the shining city in Australia for music. What’s it like coming up in that scene?
RG: I’m pretty reclusive, so as far as the scene, I only kind of know. I do go to shows, but more sporadically, I’m not really a going out kind of guy. Definitely not been that way my whole life, but I don’t think that my opinion on the Melbourne scene will be very insightful, or even valid - maybe more anecdotal. I go to shows to support people, I do that every couple months probably.
I find that among all of the artists that I speak to in this job, what we all agree on as being very important to a scene is to just show up.
RG: Yeah, I agree.
KM: There is a lot of cool stuff happening in Melbourne. For us, none of us are from here, so when we were starting out, we were doing things on our own. We didn’t know any other bands. Now we’ve started meeting people, and being a bit more in it. I used to work as a music writer, so I was aware of all the other stuff going on, but we weren’t friends with them - we just didn’t know anyone.
Your bio is fairly non-descript. Is that purposeful? How do you describe your music to people?
RG: I don’t know, at this point I’d probably give a despondent answer. I guess I could term it something, but I’d prefer that Kaya does or Vinni does that - I personally have very little interest in that- I like the practical side of things, being in the activity of music, I don’t particularly like talking about music.
KM: I think it depends on who is asking. If I meet a stranger, I’ll probably say I’m in an alt rock band, but I feel like I try to purposefully not over describe it.
RG: If I was trying to end the conversation, I would say we make post-punk. I don’t know what post-punk even means.
Post-punk is what music journalists call bands with guitars today.
KM: Yeah, it’s after-1970’s punk - something that came out over fifty years ago, perfect. We make ‘modern’ music. There was this radio station in my hometown that called itself a modern rock station, but they pretty much only played like, Red Hot Chili Peppers and Creed.
RG: I change my answer, we make modern rock.
What things do you do outside of music?
KM: I write stuff, sometimes. I used to be a journalist, but I’ve kind of fallen out of love with it a little bit, so now I just write stuff for fun. I used to write culture/lifestyle stuff for magazines, but now I just write short stories and stuff for myself.
RG: I write all sorts of stuff, paint and draw, whatever.
How do you think those things affect, influence, hinder, improve your music?
RG: I feel like however you do one thing is how you do everything. I notice that with how I make music, how I cook, clean my house - I wouldn’t say that I do things necessarily good or bad, but I definitely have some sort of… maybe expressionism? Let the unconscious talk. I hate lucid dreaming. I want to hear what something deeper is trying to say.
KM: Yeah, what he said. For me I think that my creative output is a thing I have to fill, but it changes what exactly that might be.
Do you get that same sense of fulfillment from playing live?
KM: I feel like playing live is a body thing whereas these creative things are more of a mind thing. When I used to write a lot and be in this band, it felt great to play live because I was in my head all the time but then I’d get to play live and just be in my body instead of thinking.
RG: They feel opposed to each other. I think that's why people say it's so hard to write while on tour. One is like sprinting, athletic almost, and the other is like hunting a deer - you have to be quiet and sneak up on it.
