Mason (Dutch duo Lason & Coen) burst onto the dance scene back in 2006 with the ground breaking “Exceeder” spawning the cart topping “Perfect Exceeder”. Not being genre specific is allowing the unpredictable Dutchman to make “Good honest music” picking up support from the likes of Pete Tong and Zane Lowe (BBC Radio 1) to Fat Boy Slim, Eric Prydz and Carl Cox. Now with the “Animal Language” label firmly established & a highly anticipated album just about to be released, Mason drops in to have a quick chat.

Tell us about the new album, when is it going to be released and has it changed musically from your other tracks?
"We decided to make a more "pop" album after all the dancefloor stuff throughout the last few years, so yeah it's rather different from the things that have been released before, as we've worked with lots of vocalists on this album. The first single 'Corrected' features Sam Sparro and DMC, and will be out worldwide in April."

You have your own label “Animal Language”, what made you set this up and how’s it going?
"We set it up initially to have a platform where we can pretty much do whatever we want. It gives us the possibility to just make something today and release it tomorrow, which I think is amazing. We're busy with our 7th release now, and doing labelnights here and there too - so it's building up nicely. It's also a great way for us to release some steam and make dedicated club tracks for, after all the pop work on the album."

Rumour has it you have a collaboration with Aqualung / Matt Hales on the way, whats it like and have you done any more collabs on this album?
"Yeah the list of collabs is pretty insane: (Run) DMC, Roisin Murphy, Sam Sparro, Kurtis Blow, Matt Hales indeed, Debbie Clare from Massive attack, all joining on the album. It's been a very interesting journey to work with all these people who all come from their own different backgrounds, and are all great in their field."

We saw your new track humourously named “Who Killed Trance” was remixed by Mylo on Mixmag’s Feb issue. Are you a fan and have you any more exciting remixes lined up?
"Definately a fan, Mylo has been a big pioneer in this modern day italo influenced disco stuff. We have a bunch of other remixes coming up from our album tracks too (by Riva Starr, Alex Gopher, Paolo Mojo, Rene Amesz etc.), and we always make our own 'Refurb' mix of all the tracks we do, which is basicly a non-dance mix which can go either way, from klezmer to classical or blues... too much fun to make as well !"

There seems to be a tongue in cheek approach to naming your tracks, do you think that not taking yourself too seriously is a key ingredient to success?
"Fun is definitely a key element! I believe there are lots of people who forget that the whole reason of making music should be just to have fun, in the studio as well as on stage. There's no point otherwise..."

Other than the release of your new album, is there anything new and exciting for you scheduled in 2010?
"Once we've got the album out we're gonna focus on playing live again, apart from the dj-ing... We both used to play in bands, so that's going to be a logical step for us. Oh, and I've got the London Marathon scheduled, so if you see somebody dying at the gutter that might be me as well !"

Who's been the best person you've worked with so far & who would you most like to work with?
"It's been great to work with - and be a part of - Electronation, the Dutch promoters who're doing events all around. I became a resident dj about 5 years ago and it had a great impact on my dj-ing, as the events were just so insanely fun. The list of people I'd love to work with in future is just too big.... but we're reasonably young so not giving up hope yet..."

In an industry flooded with so much good music & talent, where do you get inspiration from & who are your hero's?
"I think people are too focussed on the hot new band of today, while there's so much good music behind us... So we listen to lots of italo, disco, funk, psychedelic rock, basically everything we can get our hands on really. You're welcome to count our record collection here ;-)"

What’s the last gig you willingly went to?
"The Dutch band Gotcha! here in Holland. Best funk band we ever had in our country reunited a few months ago, which was just explodingly good..."

Were you Born To Dance?!
"No affraid not, I'm a lousy dancer. But I do nod, or dance like a monkey when I had my share of drinks"