“Just be ready” – Blair Suarez on Mason Collective’s Easter Sunday gig

James Sumner | 29th March 2018

Following sell out events across Europe, Manchester-based music group the Mason Collective are hosting a major gig at Manchester Academy, alongside Kaluki Musik in their hometown of Manchester on Easter Sunday 1 April.

Blair Suarez, Mase Milo (Adam Myles) and Omar Guedar started off back in 2014, just three friends making music and hosting parties, but have risen to one of the break out groups of 2018.

The trio have had huge support with their latest Whippin EP on Wow! records, managing to reach Beatport number one. Their sell out MVSON EVENTS have been seen at the main stages of many major events such as Hideout Festival, Creamfields, Parklife, WeAreFstvl and NASS. Alongside this they have been having their releases played by heavyweight acts such as Jamie Jones and the Paradise crew, as well as Steve Lawler and VIVA, only showing how far the group have come since their humble beginnings.

How are you feeling about the upcoming gig on Sunday?

We’re just really excited for it, I think it’s great that we’ve come so far. We are going to be joining up with the Kaluki boys for the first time, and they’re great. The Kaluki guys are the kind of guys we looked up to when we started doing events back in the day, so now the chance to do something with them is really exciting, I just can’t wait for it.

How’s it been transitioning from your initial start in 2014, just three friends making music, to the point you have reached now where you are meeting groups you’ve always looked up to?

It’s just crazy. We started this thing with no intention to get to where we are now. We just started, and I know it sounds really cliché, just as three friends who just wanted to play music and put parties on, but I think that’s kinda why it’s worked. We never put too much thought with it and just kept going and going, we just wanted to throw sick parties, and parties that everyone enjoyed. To get to a point like this is just sick.

Are you still having as much fun hosting and performing at these events as you did back in 2014?

We’re having more fun now. Now that we’ve just kept going and we’ve got a loyal crowd and a loyal following it’s even better to perform. We’re able to push out exactly what we want to push out ourselves and everyone feels it, so were having loads of fun then but probably even more now.

And do you think you’ll be keeping this going for the considerable future?

One hundred percent, we’ve just got more and more ideas, more things we want to do , more and more parties we want to put on, we also got lots of music coming as well. I’m hoping to take this from Manchester to across the UK, and then across the world too. So we’re not thinking about stopping any time soon.

 

How did you and Kaluki Musik end up working together?

It just came out naturally, we’d been doing a lot of parties in Manchester, we were doing shows that were hidden and we just started doing parties in unconventional spaces at the moment. So I think they clearly saw we were just doing our thing, and it only seemed right to join with them when they approached us. Both groups being in Manchester and both doing really well at the moment, it just made sense and ended up happening naturally.

Is there a lot fan excitement for Sunday?

Yeah, there’s loads of excitement from the fans, our socials are going crazy. We’re literally just about to sell out, with only about a hundred tickets left max. There’s a real hype online for it. I think it’s partly because it’s Easter as well, people are excited just generally to go out into town, and stream to the Manchester Academy, where they don’t normally host these kind of events.


What are your plans following this weekend?

We’ve got quite a few releases coming out next month or so, and in the summer. We’ve also got a lot of parties that we’ve been planning for the summer, there’s not much I can say right now but there will be a lot. That includes warehouse parties, rooftop parties  and again we’ve got all the unused spaces and secret locations.


“Just be ready” says Blair to those attending Sunday, the group’s work is all up on Soundcloud and their Whippin’ original mix can be found on Beatport.

Album 1

Courtesy of Jukebox PR.Courtesy of Jukebox PR.Courtesy of Jukebox PR.