We are back in the Baltics and going freeform with Allan Mastov.
You may remember we met previously Allan Mastov a few weeks back and we yapped away about his ace record store (read all about that here). This time we shift focus away from Uperkuut, and instead pick his brains about what it’s like to set up NooPop Records, and to record/release and produce the first couple of albums through it - he has been mighty busy, but not so busy we couldn’t bend his ear for another chinwag!
Allan, when we were over in your record store, we bought a copy of the 'Naissoo Freeform Quintet - Live' album, which you produced and distributed on your NooPop label. We loved the album, it took us on an epic journey. How did you come to work with the Naissoo Freeform Quintet?
The first thing that I did was quit my job. I was running a company - I was doing it for 30 years. I got tired of that and I thought I'd take the year off, so I have to think what I'm going to do. As I always wanted to release a record, I thought that there’s no better time than this year!
As I know Tõnu Naissoo, the keyboard player, I approached him and he said that he loves the idea and that we should put a project together and record it. At first, we were discussing maybe we should release a free jazz album because Tõnu, is a great, great free jazz player. He's 76 and he's done a lot of free jazz projects in the 70s and in the 80s as well. He played in Prague and the places you could go to in the Soviet era, playing with wonderful musicians. That was our first idea. But the problem is that I'm nobody and I don't have a record label and I don't have connections. So it will be really difficult to sell that album because in Tallinn, I think seven people love free jazz, and three of them are going to buy the record. I can't do the first project like that. It would be like suicide for the record label.
At First Tõnu was not so happy with that. But he can play anything. So we thought about the musicians that would be able to get into a more funky and groovy style of psychedelic, kind of a jazzy vibe. Then we put together the band.
So we started to record the studio album, the thing that I definitely wanted is that there are no written songs on the album. There are just short ideas that we gather together in the studio and everybody tries to give their best in those two days in the studio. We had very small themes of the songs around which we are going to build the music. Everybody liked that idea but then was a little bit afraid that nothing was going to work out. I said, take it easy. I thought that if the recording shall be shit, then I'm not releasing it anyway! If it's good, then I'm going to release it digitally, and if it's superb, then I thought that I would release an album in a vinyl format. I thought that it came out very, very good. So I released the studio album - 500 copies, if I remember correctly - and it was quite difficult to sell it, but I wanted to do everything by myself and see how it went.
Image copyright: Peeter Viisimaa @vuuduuu
Did you decide quite quickly after recording the studio album that you also wanted to have the 'Naissoo Freeform Quintet - Live' album that would accompany it? How did that choice to have the live album come about?
I asked Kaur Kenk, the engineer in Tallinn, a very good music engineer. I wanted him to do the sound for the live show definitely because I wanted it to sound good, to be perfect. And I know that Kaur is always doing a very, very good job.
So I said to him - record the live performance for my own purposes, for my own memory. He recorded it on 36 tracks. So all the instruments were dry, they were wet, with effects, without effects etc.
A lot of mics were put into the performance space. It's such hard work, but he did it. After, he made me a demo version of the 36 tracks because I don't have a 36 track player. I wanted them, I needed to put them all somehow together.
I listened to it at home for about a month, I think. Then I thought that it was so good that we should release that one as an album as well. So it wasn't planned at first.
My next question was going to be what were the challenges or the surprises of recording live. In this case, the surprise of recording live was the fact that it wasn't planned to be a live album at all!
It wasn't planned, but it came out and a big part of making the live album as well as the studio album, was Peeter Salmela who mastered and mixed that album, and that's the sound, the space what you are hearing, the sound that you like. It’s the Peeter Salmela thing that he does - he is an absolutely magnificent guy.
You've got three tracks on the live album, Blue, Black and Orange. How did you choose those three tracks out of everything that you had recorded or were those tracks all that was recorded during the live performance?
We recorded a couple of more songs, if I remember correctly there were two more songs. One they started with, but as it's an improvisational session they didn't start off very well at first. When you were present at the live show it felt like it was good, but afterwards when I listened to it, I didn't like the version of that song live. I like very much the song. That's the first song on the album, called White. I like that song very much on the album, in the studio version, but I didn't like it live.
Image copyright: Peeter Viisimaa @vuuduuu
There was always for us the problem that you can fit only so many minutes onto the vinyl. That left us with one third of the music that we couldn't fit. So you definitely had to do some kind of selection, with the studio album and the live album as well. So that's how we ended up with the three tracks. The first track Blue, that covers the whole A side is 22 minutes long. That's because they didn't know how to stop. That was a very, very good thing. I like it when musicians don’t know how to stop, then the real magic is going to happen.
I wanted to give a shout out to Kadri Toom and her beautiful artworks 'Turquoise Moon', and 'Pink Moon”' that feature on both of the albums that you've produced. Did you connect with Kadri through the local scene? How did you come to use her artwork?
I have known Kadri for a long time. Each year we made a present for our clients from an Estonian artist, such as Kadri. When I started to make the album I thought that Kadri is very suitable for it. I started to check her works to see which would go well for the album, I found the one we used for the album online. Then I approached Kadri and I asked could she be interested. She said she's absolutely interested, she likes the idea very much but she doesn't know where the original is. She said that about 10 years ago, she gifted it to somebody in Tartu, in the southern part of Estonia. So I started to look, and ask people who are connected to the art scene about where it could be. So I can make a reproduction from the original, I needed a good quality picture. Finally I found it - it was in the possession of my friend who lived in Tartu! So it was an interesting job to find it.
You can check out Kadri’s work online. She is really very, very good.
Lastly, what plans are you working on right now? What is next for your label Noo Pop? Are there any more albums on the horizon?
It's very difficult for me to say right now. I will try to continue the same way as I have - with building the community, with trying to talk about music, to hear what the people are interested in and what they are recommending.
With the label I have some other plans of putting together projects like the Naissoo Project. I can't really talk about that right now because it's not like a closed deal. I have two or three different album plans and that's gonna happen in the coming weeks, and something's gonna happen at the beginning of 2026, I hope. So it's gonna be interesting.
That's fantastic and a really tantalising cliffhanger to leave us on, actually! Thank you again Allan for sharing your time with us, your insights, your passion for music - we look very forward to seeing what comes next, and wish you the best of luck.
We're constantly on the look out for new artists, creatives and initiatives to feature in TheNeverZine - so if you are, or know someone who is going their own way and doing their own thing on their own terms and would be a good fit to feature please smash that button below and get in contact. By talking to each other, and sharing our journeys, ideas and insights on creativity, art, mental health and resilience we can all create, share and thrive together. Nice thought that.
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