Creative Art Direction by Street Level Imaging

Toronto, ON - 'Tis the season to praise Tone Mason. The three Toronto-based beatsmiths: Aloysius Brown, Don D., & Mellenius, are one of the city's best kept talents and are on the rise to generating international noise with their recent hook up with Midi Mafia and Relentless Management to push sales below the border and the success of the Canadian projects they have been and will be working on.

Haven't heard? Let's break it down boy by boy.

Aloysius likes to work his livewire magic on an MPC, creating real club hit compilations and fresh takes on today's popular sounds. A mover and shaker, his one true fear musically and otherwise is stagnation.

Mellenius specializes in piecing together "fragments of soul" into "patchworks of rich, full-bodied sound" that can range from clubby to chillin but are always moving in one way or another.

Last but not least is Don D., who comes with the "smooth operator" business, roots firm in the boom bap and a masters in remixing; Don's got his ASR skills tweaked to satisfy audiences of all demographics.

Tone Mason is part of the Foundation Creative Group, a GTA-based collective dedicated to developing the city's most gifted young talent, that's comprised of Public Management, Street Level Imaging, Tone Mason and World Rydah Studios.

They are the sound boys behind The Vibe and The DownLo's theme songs on MuchMusic, as well as The Rascalz, Kardinal and Choclair's hit single "Back Where I've Stayed." They've also put it down for Raptors TV, Mayhem (Hustlemann), Daryl Riley, Rickashade (SRC/Universal) and have a few other things in the works that people will rock to shortly.

Tone Mason produced most of the innovative beats that range from R&B to hip-hop to 2-Step for Rochester aka Juice, the FCG group's first emerging artist. Juice received VideoFact funding early in 2003 for "Do It (Like We Do It)," and linked with the video director and creative mastermind behind Point Blank's "Life 2002/Thin Line", G Stokes "Rock The Block" and Chrome "Assassin": Randall Thorne of Next Element Entertainment.

The three are currently finishing contracts for U.S. recording artists Rikashade (SRC/Universal), and Talib Kweli and have recently begun working with Midi Mafia/Relentless Management for sales representation in the States. (Look out for a co-production between Midi Mafia and Tone Mason on Talib Kweli's next album.)

"We had alot of notables and insiders take notice when we distributed our first two showcase CDs," the guys said. "We built up our local credits gradually. People also paid attention to the work we did on our in-house Foundation Creative Group artist, Rochester aka Juice. Dirty Swift from Midi Mafia took notice of what we were doing and put Relentless Management onto us."

Don D. was deejaying and producing as a part of Nefarius when he and the other two met and got to know each other way back when. For a while before the end of Nefarius, the three acted as sort of "production protégés" for each other; and when the chapter closed for good Don D. thought it would be shameful for their material to go unheard, so Tone Mason was born.

"We'd go record shopping and give feedback on each others work," Don D. reminisces. "They had a lot of natural talent and were very musically developed for their ages…I wanted them to have an avenue to get into the scene and showcase their considerable talent and create an impact. I didn't want to be a manager, so I decided the next best thing was to show them the ropes working shoulder to shoulder as part of a team. That's how the idea of the collective came about. Contagious from Pherenzicks offered the name, Tone Mason."

Their central production pieces are two MPCs and an ASR X Pro; they use samples and a variety of different modules to create their hot sound; the hotness, they say, you're not supposed to be able to describe in words. Anyway, "it's not the board," they say, "it's the craftsman. The one thing we all do have in common are Zip drives."

A few of their personal faves as far as self-produced tracks include Juice's "Do It (remix)," featuring Kardinal, Mayhem Morearty and Jugganot (Brownbricks) and "The Throwback," featuring Brassmunk, Graph Nobel and G-Stokes. And on that note, Tone Mason is one of the few production collectives that you can listen to and note how they cover broad and diverse ground as their appreciation of a load of different types of music reflects in their output.

"It's something a lot of producers say but don't really live up to," they said. "We like being able to go from a track like Choclair's "Back Where I've Stayed" to Juice's "Do It." Our catalog is even broader than the gap between those two tracks we have very worldly influences. Most anything that's out there, as long as it's good."

"Toronto has traditionally been very influenced by the East and by dancehall. We don't have too many hip-hop artists that stray outside of that. So, most anything we showcase out of Toronto will reflect those influences but we're capable of producing other things. We have a few trademarks, like unique drums, reversing samples and some of the obscure sources that we sample. In general though, between the three of us, we cover many different feels and we're not restricted to any particular style. Between us, our material covers the East and West Coast, Dirty South and RnB. We've even strayed outside of urban music. We don't really want to be pigeon-holed, since we take some pride in being able to cover all these different feels well."

"Each artist has his or her own niche audience and, as a producer, you have to adapt to that accordingly. You don't have to match what's been done for them before, but whatever new ideas you do try, still need to appeal to the artist's crowd. In the best of cases, you'll be able to innovate, satisfy their existing audience and also pull in new listeners for them."

So what's the #1 most important thing for a producer to remember?
"Don't listen to the yes men. Know your real critics; they hold you to the standard set by your best work. They're the ones that tell you your alright beats suck."

Tone Mason Shout outs:

"The whole Foundation team, Camp X, Relentless (yes, Mo') and Midi Mafia, HipHopCanada.com, Brownbricks, Won-by-One, Hustlemann, Starting from Scratch, FLOW 93.5, CHRY (DJ-DJ Grouuuuch!!!), CIUT, CKLN, Brassmunk, Graph Nobel, G-Stokes, Circle, Eternia, Ken Masters, Snaz. Apologies if we forgot anyone well get you next time around. Much love to everyone that supports good music."