Mason

Born Iason Chronis on 17 January 1980 in Amsterdam, the Dutch electro-house DJ and producer known as Mason started out down a purely classical route, picking up the violin at six and joining the Dutch children's choir on TV show Kinderen voor Kinderen, but later spied a gap in the dance music market. He began honing his DJing abilities in the mid-1990s, skillfully incorporating some of his violin playing into these early sets and bringing the instrument into a live performance space while on tour with Tiësto in 2004. His first releases as Mason saw the light around this time, introduced through cuts like the Helikopter EP, 2005's "The Screetch" and 2006's "The Benedict Files" and he soon created a buzz with the "Perfect (Exceeder)" single featuring rapper Princess Superstar in 2006—a mashup of his "Exceeder" instrumental—which shot to the top of the UK Dance Singles Chart in 2007 and turned him into an overnight sensation. In the throes of this success, he launched his own label Animal Language in 2008 and three years later dropped his debut album on the imprint, They Are Among Us, which featured collaborations with Aqualung, Róisín Murphy, Kurtis Blow, and DMC. He gathered the talents of Jocelyn Brown, Zoot Woman, and Hercules & Love Affair vocalist Rouge Mary for his follow-up LP ZOA, released in 2014 and went on to put out releases consistently over the next decade, with his fourth studio album Chroma Panorama arriving in 2023, assisted by the likes of Dragonette, Sweetie Irie (Gorillaz), Jack Garrett and Zero 7 vocalist Sophie Barker. In 2024, "Perfect (Exceeder)" returned to prominence when it was featured on the soundtrack for the viral 2023 film Satlburn. A sped-up version of "Perfect (Exceeder) [1234 – Let Me Hear you Scream]" emerged in 2024.