A student at the Conservatory of Music in Verona, Italy, Masi’s big break came in 1983 with the band Dark Lord, which toured with Saxon and Motörhead. Gaining notoriety at the same time neoclassical shredders such as Yngwie Malmsteen, Tony MacAlpine, and Vinnie Moore were dominating guitar magazines, Masi was signed to Metal Blade, moved to Los Angeles, and ultimately earned a Grammy nomination for his instrumental album, Attack of the Neon Shark in 1989.

The years since have taken Masi along many unfamiliar roads, but his latest release—the live 1900-Hard Times [Lion Music] with the band MCM—reveals a player who is as dexterous and as adventurous as ever. For example, “Mutual Assured Distraction” finds him using live loops to create cassette-player-on-the-fritz noises before launching into Holdsworthian angularities, “House of Deviants” grooves with sparkling chords and tasty clean licks that sound like Eric Johnson after a visit to the Middle East, and “For Every Color You Know” mixes fat, neck-pickup blues riffs with slippery wah melodies.

You’re clearly influenced by a lot more than classical music and neoclassical shredders. Who were your formative influences?
I got into avant-garde music when I was about 17, after seeing Fred Frith at a Henry Cow concert. Henry Cow represented a truly musical alternative to punk rock. I found a lot of punk to be extremely interesting—especially the Sex Pistols, Siouxsie and the Banshees, and the Stranglers—but, after a while, it just turned into a fashion thing. The big, bloated mainstream rock bands were releasing pretty lame albums, and disco was nauseating—although I appreciate some of it now. When I saw Henry Cow, and witnessed these amazing musicians playing 30-minute pieces influenced by Zappa and Schoenberg, I felt there was hope. That’s also when I discovered the rest of the Canterbury scene, with Hatfield and the North, Gong, Robert Wyatt, and so on.

Another big part of your identity came after discovering Hindustani and Qawwali music, and jamming with Rahat Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan.
I had no idea what I was getting into when I accepted an invitation to jam with Rahat and his group at a party. The intensity of the music was so overwhelming—I felt like I was flying. For some reason, their phrasing and choice of notes clicked immediately, and I found myself improvising unison lines with Rahat. Some music is rooted in our DNA—it’s archetypal, and it sometimes surfaces unconsciously. All one needs to do is get out of the way, and let it pour out. Of course, I did analyze their melodic ideas and embellishments afterwards, and that has changed my guitar playing a lot—especially with various forms of vibrato and pitches in between notes. Anyone interested in that style of music should collect as much of it as possible, and just get lost in it without preconceived ideas. Eventually, it’ll affect the way you approach music.

What is your approach to looping?
The idea is to add color and texture. Plus, playing a loop while you’re playing real-time guitar throws off the listener’s sense of linear direction—which is always a bonus. I use Line 6 DL4 Delay Modelers. There are way more sophisticated devices out there, but it’s just a matter of finding what fits one’s needs. I recommend experimenting with forward looping, but also reverse, slowed-down, and sped-up looping. You just have to sit down with one of these machines and see where your imagination takes you.

What other gear do you rely on?
It took me a long time to find my way out of the typical, highly overdriven metal sound, but I’ve rediscovered weaker pickups and old fuzzboxes. For the MCM album, I used an old Charvel and a Manne guitar from Italy. But now my main guitar is a Music Man Silhouette, which has been a total revelation. Onstage, I use a Blackstar tube overdrive, a Tonebone Classic, a Boss CS-3 compressor, an old Carvin power amp, and an old Crate 4x12 cab. I use a .008 set of Ernie Ball strings and V-Picks.

You’re working on a new electronic project—has it required you to adjust your approach?
The guitar side stays the same for the most part. What changes is the environment in which it’s placed. I’ve been experimenting with electronic music for a couple of years now, and I’m finally starting to feel confident about not falling into clichés, or sounding like I’m playing against a drum machine and a sequencer. My heroes in this field are Squarepusher, Aphex Twin, and Liam Howlett of the Prodigy. In terms of musical innovation, I believe electronica—and its appli- cations in various types of music—is the future. The amount of processing and manipulative power available can give any sound a brand new voice and impact.

Guitar wizardry suffered a backlash in the ’90s, and you took a break after your 1990 album Vertical Invader. Why?
The grunge era put 99 percent of the metal people out of business. Suddenly, a lot of doors were closed. I had added bad luck, because my management was the same people who managed Stevie Ray Vaughan. When he died, most of their business was gone, and I was without a label and a manager. During those years, I started searching for a musical identity again, and the path has been long and winding, with lots of missteps and attempts at bringing back the “good ol’ days.” But I slowly found a direction again.

What did you learn from that trying period?
Don’t follow a trend! Just because something is successful, it doesn’t mean it should be repeated ad nauseam, with the same note choices, the same vibrato, and the same tone. Music is about finding a personal voice and identity.

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