Let Squeeze Mason be your rocket to the ethereal voyage that is their debut album

On 31 March, Montreal-based band, Squeeze Mason released their debut album, The Astral Ballroom, and made sure to open the floor to all who wish to join this cosmic dance.

Originally formed in 2019, the band first included twins Gary and Ted Schulze, hailing from Whitehorse, Yukon, and Dexter Dippong. Gary is the multi-instrumentalist, Ted is on the Keyboard, and Dippong is the bassist as well as is a producer. 

In March 2022, however, Charlotte Grieves (vocalist) and Adam (guitarist) joined the crew, and the instrumentalist threesome turned into a five-piece full fledged band.

Grieves has recently moved to Vancouver, British Columbia, and is no longer part of the band. It is her vocals on the tracks, however.

The Astral Ballroom is a collection of seven songs, all designed to make allusion to space, its mysticism and wonders.

The track-list, with most of the names inspired by the planets, is as follows:

• “Elsewhere.”
• “DUI In Outer Space.”
• “Titan” ft liv.
• “Europa.”
• “Olympus Mons.”
• “With Bated Breath.”
• “Fishing for the Blues (Astral Edit)”

“We definitely had like, the planets in mind, just like spacey shit [when we produced and wrote the songs],” the band says. “We just like the planets, and I guess those were named after the Greek mythology.”

“Titan” alludes to the moon in Jupiter, “Europa” to the moon in Saturn and “Olympus Mons” to a large shield volcano on Mars, and the tallest mountain currently discovered in the solar system.

“We wanted something to kind of fit the the vibe like the atmosphere of the album. Originally, it wasn’t really our intention to make an album. We just kind of like, we were always like writing new music and we couldn’t really stop ourselves. But since we wrote them all around the same timeframe, we had similar enough motives where it felt like it was the same style and the same influences going into everything, which made everything feel very kind of uniform and cohesive across the board.”

“Yeah, like even lyrically, because we wrote a lot of the things originally because we’re recording for the singles for the EP that we ended up expanding into [the album] basically, because two of the songs I think didn’t have lyrics, I wrote all the lyrics for like a really short span,” Dexter Dippong shares. “So I was like, in the same place, so they kind of like, you know, they’re not like just different random things. They’re all very vague, but I think emotionally I was in the same place when I wrote them all. So there’s like a lot of stuff I was struggling with, at the time that they all kind of slot together across the thing. So if you look at it that way, it tells more of a cohesive story, even the order they got put in. It kind of makes sense to me, lyrically through.”

“Titan” was the first single to come out from their album, on 17 March, with a recurrent, very special feature to the band, liv.

 “I got a text from Dexter back in February of 2022 saying “Hey, we were talking… Would you be down to bus on up for a weekend and do another song and video shoot with us?” liv. says, as she resides in New York, and Squeeze Mason are based in Montreal. “It was an instantaneous yes for me. We work really well together.”

“The instrumental on “Titan” was just so fucking beautiful, we were like we need to find like the best singer possible,” Schulze says, “and it was like “oh who do we know” and snap, we were all like LIV! No hesitation, that’s our girl.”

The following singles that the band shared before releasing their album into the world were “Olympus Mons” on 17 February, and “DUI In Outer Space” on 10 March.

On 31 March, Petit Campus, Café Campus’ concert hall, was booming with radiant energy, with its stage graced with the presence of main talents Squeeze Mason, and two of Montreal’s finest bands: Old Soul and Super Sandwich.

Formed in 2017, Old Soul is a Montreal-based rock band drawing inspirations from the psychedelic rock genre of the 1960s and 1970s.

They recently released their debut album Overgrown, in late February, and have been getting more tractions all over the city, appearing recently on a number of radio shows, and podcasts, promoting their released tunes after a few years of releasing singles.

Super Sandwich is an up-and-coming Montreal band, radiating a musical mix of funk, pop and house.

A six-piece with an educational music background, the band members are:

• Isaac Goldman on keyboard.
• Zach Winter on guitar.
• Juan Quintero on bass, for a number of bands and artists as well such as: @vitalia.music, @thechrisgeorgeproject, @djimrade, @erinxmarcellina, @neon_lagoon and more.
• Daniel Mottahedeh on drums.
• Marie-Jeanne Paquet as the vocalist, and future McGill Schulich (McGill School of Music) graduate.
• Leo Codiga on the saxophone; and current Schulich student.

Super Sandwich has been a consistent live performer since April 2022, and have shared the stage with Squeeze Mason on several occasions, prior to The Astral Ballroom release party.

But Old Soul and Super Sandwich were not the only ones who joined the astral talents on March 31st.

Hailing from the Big Apple, is none-other than the rising Americana star herself, liv — sharing the stage with Squeeze Mason for more than one song.

Flashy pants, cinched corset, and a cowboy hat to boot, liv.’s stage presence is captivating, singing her heart out, interacting with both the crowd and band, as if she was born to entertain everyone around her.

Prior to the band’s release party, Squeeze Mason teased on their social media platforms their new singer’s identity, and on the day of, we all got to meet the wonderfully talented Aurélie.

When the band announced Greaves’ departure from the band, speculations over who would replace her strong stage presence and powerful vocals were bounced off across the Montreal music scene.

Once Aurélie hit the stage, however, all questions were answered, as she took her place on stage between Dippong and Schulze (Ted), clad in a black overall, curly pink hair beautifully contrasting with the blue lighting, and began to belt the first words to “DUI In Space.”

You wouldn’t believe she only had three weeks to learn the tracks and prepare for the show, as the band’s sound flows beautifully from one song to another.

On 15 September, Squeeze Mason released a single titled “In and Around the Sun,” truly encompassing a Montreal feel, as Old Soul’s Loretta Triconi and Proximity to Temptation’s Chris Petterson were featured.

“We’d already played together with these bands, like felt comfortable, that the product that we’d have with them would be good,” says Schulze.

“Yeah, so it’s really like, it’s a good Montreal music scene song because we also have to recon sacks voting more like than the jazzy and does like a bunch of jam nights,” says Dippong. “So you get like a whole range of different Montreal artists on there. Because that was like, before we had our singer we were like more of a producer band or being a guest on everything. So it’s really like the last song in our producer band phase.”

Given that both featured artists were present on 31 March, one Busybee request would have been a live performance of this ethereal song, to culminate the astral theme.

Congratulations to Squeeze Mason on their album release, and here’s to many more!