Daiana Feuer on November 9th, 2016

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Over the course of 13 albums, Rachel Mason has creatively fused music with sculpture, film and performance art. With an operatic voice, Mason brings characters and creatures to life who embody whatever social and political commentary she seeks to express within her trickster persona. Cleopatra Records and cassette label Practical Records will co-release her newest creation, “Das Ram,” on Nov. 18. Produced by L.A. artist-musician Jeff Hassay, each song on the album tells the story of a different character engaged in their own invented reality. A play on Mason’s initials, the album title is an inversion of famous guru-healer Ram Dass, and healing appears as a general theme in each of the character’s needs. She’s just revealed the second single, “Heart Explodes,” with a video created by Mason and Aksel Stasny, a cinematographer who shot her feature film, “The Lives Of Hamilton Fish.” The video references Edith Piaf by focusing on Mason singing into a glowing spotlight, but slowly we watch her flesh change and become monstrous, until finally her heart indeed explodes. The metaphor is about self-reinvention. Mason says, “Women are often offered a set of limitations from an early age, and these restrictions determine so much of one’s destiny. Yet, there can be great things that arise from limitation, but controlling one’s own set of rules, one’s own box, one’s own destiny is the key.”

Currently Mason is completing residency at Hammer Museum. Performance dates are here.

||| Watch: “Heart Explodes”

||| Also: “Tigers In The Dark”

||| Live: The Practical Records cassette release show takes place Nov. 13 at Human Resources and the Cleopatra Records release show is Nov. 27 at Bootleg Theater. Tickets.