This untitled EP follows the release of 2015’s full-length Seraph, 2014’s Worth EP. These records saw Mas Ysa touring with Hundred Waters, Phantogram, Deerhunter, Young Fathers, Julianna Barwick and others, but life can hit you fast, this release follows an unplanned break from performing live as singer/songwriter Thomas Arsenault suffered a head injury in a car accident making shows uncomfortable and touring impossible. Thomas took time to recover and write in Pueblo Eden, Uruguay. Some of this music was recorded at Future-Past in Hudson New York with Patrick Higgins and appears on this EP. After returning to New York Thomas had the help of Damian Taylor, Michael Beharie and Greg Fox to finish up the tunes.

Mas Ysa is the music of Thomas Arsenault, born to French Canadian and Ecuadorian parents in Montreal his family moved to São Paulo where he went to high school and started making music. He moved to NY in 2007 and found a home in Brooklyn joining the DIY community creating his amphetamine bursts of inspirational music. “MapQuest” is a fire-bending ride that only completes its quest for space in your mind by how strangely cinematic it sounds. It’s not so strange after all, Arsenault created a breathtaking film that spans its entirety. Directed by Dan Shapiro and shot on 16 mm film the music is set against simple, almost still moments of people doing things. As if to mark another break from performance Thomas decided to be in the film, I don’t know what’s in store for him, but his sensitivity for the dream-like in lo-fi punk shoe-gazery makes him a wizard in my eye, oh and he survived an accident so I’m probably right.