Mahogany
Words: Cameron Cook
Images: Jessica Wiliams 
Like The Jesus and Mary Chain, Cocteau Twins and My Bloody Valentine before them, Mahogany are a band with celestial aspirations, grounded by post-rock instrumentation and a highly-conceptual take on the musical experience. It’s hard to describe Mahogany because they encompass so many things in one collective—shoegaze, yes, but also wall-of-sound orchestration, pop sensibility, experimental rock and the slightest sliver of twee. Connectivity!, their new album on Darla Records, was produced by none other than Robin Guthrie (the portly genius of the aforementioned Cocteau Twins), and recounts, all at once, hundreds and hundreds of tales of relationships between human beings, machines and cities, like the futuristic world X-Ray Spex envisioned in “The Day The World Went Day-Glo”, only softened by wonderful layers of fuzzy guitars, angelic harmonies and dual, rubbery basslines. In other words, pure bliss.
Mahogany are a collective of eight people, male and female, playing, breathing and living music. I sat down with Andrew Prinz (guitar and lead vocals), Ana Breton (guitar and vocals) and Katrina Rudmin (keyboard, bells and vocals) one rainy night before they were slated to perform at New York City’s Bowery Ballroom.
The band has been going on for a while right?
Andrew: Well, I have.
Oh, you’re the main dude…
Andrew: Yeah, for a while now. Each time we do something new, we bring in a couple more people. Right now it’s anywhere from seven to nine people.
So do you like, add a new member with every album, or every year or whatever? Like it started as a duo, and now it’s this big collective eight years later?
Andrew: Well, it started with just me and my girlfriend, and my sister and her friend for a while. It’s been a lot of different numbers of people [laughs]. But a lot of the writing concepts for this album were based around having two of a lot of things, like two bassists, two guitar players, two drummers.
I wanted to ask you about that, because when I first saw you play, the stage was set up with the two bassists and drummers and what have you, this perfectly symmetrical pyramid, was very cool.
Andrew: I was listening to a lot of harpsichord music, and listening to how the basslines were developed in that. I recorded a lot of cello for this album, and around this time last year [someone robbed our studio], and that was erased, so we were left in this situation where we had all these parts that we had scored and written out, but we didn’t have our tracks any more. Instead of the cello playing it, having two bassists play it made it something that was a little bit different in the end. It was good for it to move to that, I think.
I saw you play at the Brooklyn Peace Fair also, which was kind of weird as I wasn’t there for bands, I was there because a friend was doing volunteer work. How did that gig come about?
Andrew: We had been asked to do it a while back, and we thought it was just a really good idea. It was totally fun.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a band with that many people set up in so little time.
Andrew: Ryan’s got our speed up. He’s trai-ned us. We’re all set-up specialists now.
Ana, why do you think there are so few girls who play guitars in mostly male indie rock bands?
Ana: Hm, I’m not sure I have the answer to that. I was actually talking to Britta Philips from Luna about it. I don’t know why girls don’t, but I do know that it’s nice to see a woman who has been playing an instrument in a band for years and who’s a little bit older than me play guitar. Even before I was in a band, seeing bands like Elastica. It was great. It was definitely inspiring. I just play because it’s fun, and it’s great to see girls playing any instrument. Guitar is one, but Katrina is a mack keyboard player. I think it’s great to have girls playing in bands period. The more the better. I just want to see people playing music, and wanting to play music. That’s what it’s about for me.
So it’s more the music than the instrument.
Ana: Yeah, but I really like playing my guitar! I gravitated towards it. I wanted to make the sounds that I always heard and admired. I wanted to replicate them and make my own. Just rocking out.
Did you guys enjoy working with Robin Guthrie on Connectivity!?
Ana and Katrina: [Laughs]
Is that a dumb question?
Ana: No! But of course, we were definitely excited. What was so great about working with Robin — first off we consider him a genius — but it was a collaboration. We wanted to make sure that it was a working relationship. The beauty of it is that we worked together, and that was the biggest excitement of it all.
Katrina: There was a fair amount of back and forth, sending ideas, even photos. Getting him our concept of the song, how we heard it, then seeing what he brought back. It was really cool.
Website: myspace.com/mahoganyinthecity