Balmaske started as a question I couldn't shake: what's the difference between the face you wear out and the one underneath it? A masquerade felt like the only honest way to ask that — everyone dressed up, the room glowing, and nobody quite telling the truth.
The mask as the whole idea
The title leans on the image of a masked ball — bal masqué — and I chased every meaning of it, not just the party but the performance of the party. On a track like this the mask isn't a costume you take off when the lights come up; it's the thing you forget you're still wearing. I wanted the song to live in that gap between how a person presents and what's actually moving behind the eyes. Persian has a way of holding glamour and ache in the same breath, and a masquerade is exactly that: shine up front, something quieter and lonelier just behind it.
How I wanted it to feel
Sonically I went after contrast, because that's what a masked ball is — light and shadow crowded into the same room. The palette I kept coming back to:
- Warmth up top with something cold underneath, so it invites you in but never quite lets you relax.
- Space between the elements, letting the empty room behind the party breathe.
- A vocal that slides between playful and guarded, sometimes inside the same line.
- A low end that keeps its distance instead of hitting you square in the chest.
The goal was a track you could put on at a party and move to, but that would say something completely different alone at 2 a.m. Same song, different mask.
Why it stays with me
Years on, it's still the one from that era I'd point a new listener to first, and I think it's because the theme never expired. We all curate a version of ourselves now — a feed, a highlight reel, a face kept ready for the group chat. A masquerade turned out to be a pretty accurate picture of how a lot of us live full-time. I didn't set out to make a statement about any of that. I just followed the image of a room full of masks and wrote down what it made me feel. Balmaske is my attempt to enjoy the dance and admit the loneliness of it in the space of one song.