MASTERSYSTEM - "Dance Music"

Mastersystem is/was a new super group or something of that matter that just release their debut album "Dance Music" on Physical Education Records.  I do say is/was since the heartbreaking news that lead singer Scott Hutchison (Frightened Rabbit) ended his life last week in Scotland after suffering from depression.  This has been heartbreaking to me as I believe he had a lot more to offer us with his talent from the slow melodic/dark songs of Frightened Rabbit to this project which brought together members of FR, Editors and Minor Victories to play more guitar heavy with influences of grunge rock from the 90's.

Mastersystem is made up of two sets of brothers, Scott Hutchison (Frightened Rabbit), Grant Hutchison (Frightened Rabbit), Justin Lockey (Editors) and James Lockey (Minor Victories).  

Their debut album was released on April 6th, 2018 and they set out to do a mini 6 date tour of the UK  as well as a Performance on BBC Scottland's The Quay Sessions that they played many of the new songs as well as an interview with Scott on how they got together.

You can watch the Quay Session on the BBC here : 

The album consists of 9 songs and 36 minutes of quality music.  The first song "Proper Home"  Starts off with some nice heavy guitars leading leading into Scott's lyrics.  It brings me back to some older music where you start heavy, go soft and then kick it in again to finish it off.  Brilliant song overall.  I read in an interview that The Lockey Brothers wrote the music and Scott added the lyrics after.  This is interesting to me because I always seem to think it was easier to write lyrics then add music.  So I too learned different ways of doing it.  Scott said the Lockey boys speak with a Doncaster accent and everything is Proper this and that.  So Proper Home was Born.

The next song on the album had a Morrissey sort of title as Scott calls it.  He does claim to not like the Smiths at all even though he writes depressing music.  Sounds pretty funny to me.  The song "Notes on a Life Not Quite Lived" has some fantastic lyrics tied into a heavy rhythm of guitars and drum beats.  It's a fantastic song and feels like the anthem of this album.  The fist video released from these songs in "Notes on a Life not Quite Lived"  you can watch it here on YouTube:

"The Enlightenment" really had Grant slamming away on the drums and its fantastic.  Apparently Justin had originally titles the song "Ultra Fast Fucker" but turned into "Enlightenment".  The drums are heavy the guitars go off and Scott just starts screaming lyrics.  Pretty well done, lovely.  Makes me think of a few classic old punk rock songs.  

Heres the video:

"Teething" starts off with a very building up ballad song.  It's dark and really had a nice climb from the start right to the end.  The ending build up to a full on rock song and it awesome.

"Peaks & Troughs & Graves" is a loose dark ballad of depression.  In Scott style he wrote some dark depressing lyrics topped with some gnarly guitar jams.  You can hear Hazel Wilde of Lanterns on the Lake very slightly in the backing.  Another dark yet groovy tune.

Moving into the up temp song on the album, "Old Team", was what they called themselves prior to choosing the name Mastersystem.  This one starts up tempo and had a night lyrical workup going into the heavy fuzzy guitars playing through.

Here's a YouTube audio of "Old Team":

"Must Try Harder" is the one of those songs that's about really trying to be a better person and giving it a go.  Justin refers to this as one that you can tell they all listened to the Smashing Pumpkins back in the day.  It does show out in the chorus and the heavy guitars covering.  

This one brings out a lot lyrically about Scott's depression.  He was very open about his struggle and this really pulls that out including at one point talking about making it until next year.  Unfortunately that didn't happen.  Really a good cross of music.  Justin mentions something about being the closest thing to The Posies as a song.

"Bird is board of Flying" again has that Smashing Pumpkins fly in with the guitar and go to a ballad and then gets a heavy chorus going again.  Fantastic finish to the album with a lot of power, fuzziness and melodic tempos.  

I really have enjoyed listening to this and really wished that Scott would have stuck around to continue making more music with both Mastersystem, Frightened Rabbit and his solo project Owl John.  He left us way too early at 36.  There are so many if only situations but depression got the best of him and in the end we will still have all of his brilliant music to hold on to.

Go out and buy this album and listen to all the lyrics as well as the fantastic music of it.  They really put together a masterpiece that will be well loved and received.  Thanks Scott, Grant, James and Justin for this amazing album and my first review after a long hiatus of doing reviews.  I did get a lot of the historical portions from interviews the guys did for BBC, GoldFlakePaint, NME as well as other various sources.

Enjoy!  Cheers!