edit: This is no longer available to download free from bandcamp, but you can buy it through Amazon and Itunes

Tecla’s freshly released first album Strangers in Masks has been my go to album for the past two weeks. When I’m not listening to something for an assignment I cue up the album right at the beginning and find myself tapping right along to her great brand of 1980s tinged socially aware pop. Socially aware pop?

Tecla Espositio is part of an emergent string of artists who choose not to rage against the machine but rather to dance against the machine, creating the kind of socially conscious dance music that Armand Van Helden once wished would emerge. Artists like Ebony Bones, and MPHO who engage in issues of gender, race and society at large while using the tools of dance music to ensure that it ingrains itself into your brain.

Across the sixteen tracks of Strangers in Masks the main theme of self-acceptance splits off to be examined through a number of different variations. “Skinny, Skinny” deals with eating disorders and the acceptance of personal beauty beyond the pressure of society. “Good Hair” is about women of color altering their hair to fit in with those same beauty pressures. “When I was a Sinner” touches upon the dichotomy of hiding who you are beneath the rigid rules of the “saved” in Christianity. While songs like “My Boyfriend, Your Girlfriend” seek to normalize polyamorous relationships and the rapturous “So Have I” acts as confessional.

You’d think that heady topics like this would make for limited listening, but again, this is all delivered through some excellent dance pop production that helps reclaim a “lesser” genre from the of the Clear Channel age. Think “There But For The Grace of God”, the socially conscious house of Green Velvet, the Pet Shop Boy’s ability to weave the melancholy of gay life into the pure joy of that same life. Think the polemics of punk matinees interwoven with the acceptance of warehouse parties at 3 AM.

As a huge fan of Tecla’s album, I was very excited when she accepted my request to answer a few questions over email.

Thank you for taking time out of your day to do this. I really like the album, finding it very complimentary to what you do with Gordon Voidwell but also different enough that you have your own musical voice on this project. I like that you have coupled a rarely seen lyrical style to this music and have taken on some pretty serious topics and are presenting them in an almost playful or even arch tone.

What drove you to start making music? Did you grow up in a musical household?

I started taking piano lessons when i was 5 and since i was a kid was in love with playing elaborate classical pieces. I grew up in a household full of un-american and un-conventional music, especially for kids – like caribbean instrumental music and italian opera. By the time i was 10 I had started writing piano compositions with lyrics for kids, and actually published a kids music book when i was 15, I guess pop hooks were always in me. By the time I got to Wesleyan I had decided to become a music major, and the rest just developed after that.

Before the release of Strangers in Masks, you played in numerous bands encompassing a wide variety of styles from reggae to punk. Are any of these projects still going independent of your participation?

Although those bands don’t exist any more they very much play an integral part of my musical sensibility and identity today. Illegalize was my well known hip-hop/reggae band at Wesleyan that broke up only because the lead MC’s graduated, but i still do work with certain members on side collaborations, for example one of the lead MC’s Tavi and I have recently started a production duo. Same goes for by rock band “Sweetie”. I still work with many members of the band on instrumental collaborations, in fact the drummer Bob King played drums on “Mister Insomniac”.

Did you perform vocal duties in these other bands or were you predominately an instrumentalist?

For the earlier bands I was predominantly an instrumentalist since that was what I had been trained in for so many years. I always played either 2 synths on stage or synth bass and lead synth, which became my signature style. In my first bands outside of college I wrote many songs for the lead vocalists, but for some reason had the weird false notion that I wasn’t “allowed” to sing lead vocals myself since I wasn’t vocally trained. I started doing a lot of second vocal performance in “Sweetie”, for which I got a lot of positive feedback on my vocal quality, which eventually led me to take the leap into lead vocals on my own solo project.

Strangers in Masks is really thematically sound. Each of the sixteen songs sounds like it belongs on the album to push it forward or to examine a different facet of the theme. Was this a conscious decision during the writing of the album or did you edit it down to these elements?

To be honest sometimes I look at the album and wonder how it all came together myself. The lyrical themes of the songs just sort of came out of me at different times as obvious topics that had been on my mind and needed to be released. The production style was definitely a more conscious decision. I chose to keep the production style as one identifiable sound aesthetic in order to package the album as a complete thought. If i hadn’t done that I would have definitely ended up with one live punk instrumentation, another jazz horn-heavy piano-heavy instrumentation, another acoustic melodic guitar instrumentation, and like a million people on the album (a direction that i totally respect, but felt it was time to showcase this electronic side of myself more than the live instrumental side). Towards the end of the album I brainstormed about ways in which I could tie the “Strangers In Masks” theme together in a way that people would understand, and literally one night right before i fell asleep the idea of the masked interludes came to me and i literally started recording them right then and there (thats the beauty of a home studio).

How long did Strangers in Masks take to produce?

Besides the one track “See The Rainbows”, which i had produced in 2006 and then revisited last summer, and the tracks produced by other people, I started the album in Berlin in November, 2009 and it was pretty much done by March 2010 so…like 5 months total.

Though you played all of the songs and sang every piece, you pulled in a lot of other talent to help bring the full album to life. Could you talk about the people who helped you and what they did?

YES! I love every single person that helped me on this album so much for the work they did. Simon O’Connor of the band “Amazing Baby” co-produced the track for “See The Rainbows” back in 2006 with me. Kassa Overall (the drummer in Gordon Voidwell who is about to come out with his own mixtape called “Mister Insomniac” actually inspired by track 13 of my album) had given me the beat for “Technology” a while before I went to Berlin and I ended up including it on my album right in the middle as the perfect song to switch up the energy mid-way through. He also co-produced the track for “My Boyfrind, Your Girlfriend”. B’dot Forealla is a singer/songwriter/producer from my old band The Ahficionados who recorded and worked on “Good Hair” and “Life Of Luxury” with me at his studio. Daniel Lynas mixed the whole album with me at his studio Wonderful Recordings, as well as recorded vocals for about half of the songs. The rest were recorded by me at my home studio in Manhattan.

A lot of the lyrics to the songs have a very strong message; from body image in “Skinny, Skinny,” to racial interaction and growing up in rejection to clearly defined places in “Good Hair,” to the role of religion in actions in “When I was a Sinner,” but it doesn’t seem like there is any anger in your music, but rather a kind of exasperation at the world around you. Is that a fair statement or am I reading to much into it?

No you’re absolutely right! The one thing about the “message” of this album is that i didn’t want to seem like i was judging anyone in any of the songs. I say “I wish you loved your nappy nappy good hair without a texturizer or a fine toothed comb” and “she goes out dancing with her friends, pretends to laugh, then goes home crying” to all of the ladies out there including myself who have felt at some point in their lives that they have to look like someone else in order to fit society’s standard of beauty, not as criticism but as empathy. Similarly “When I Was a Sinner” is a commentary on society’s obsession with religious polarization and contentious arguments on “good” and “evil”, the “sinner” and the “saved”.

What is a live Tecla performance like? Do you have a full band or do you sequence everything and provide vocals?

I used to only perform with a live band, but since the album is like a rebirth for me, I decided to start from scratch and perform solo with everything sequenced, while playing a few synth solo’s and some percussion here and there. I crave the energy of live musicians on stage with me, however, and am sure that I won’t be able to stay away from it for long. Stay on the lookout for my live show as it progresses from just Tecla to probably a big band comprised of 3 Trumpets, a Sitar and Banjo, Tuba, Harmonium, some Tablas, and maybe a gospel choir who knows.

Are there any contemporary artists out there who are inspiring you?

I do appreciate women like Peaches, Ebony Bones, Santogold, MIA, Janelle Monae, and Lady Gaga because something about either their performance style or personal aesthetic is breaking gender boundaries, breaking stereotypes, breaking genre stereotypes, and catching people’s attention, something which i have always wanted to see more of in the mainstream music industry, especially from female acts.

When you’ve taken over the world, what’s the first law you would enact as dictator?

I’d make every wealthy man over 40 switch places with an impoverished man over 40 for a week, and every wealthy trust find baby under 30 switch places with a financial-aid student-loan-paying kid under 30 for a week…or maybe just make them all watch “Trading Places” with Eddie Murphy and Dan Aykroyd…or both.

What’s next for you?

Duh taking over the world…

Tecla will be performing at House of Yes this Thursday, April 15th. It’s $5 at the door or $15 for door and open bar all night.