mazes – mixtape

In the last few days Italian Beach Babes have been talking of a mixtape by Manchester’s Mazes. It will be in the style of Fucked Up/Sebadoh The Freed Weed with content centring around rarities, covers, samples and alternative takes, all by Mazes themselves. The mixtape will be limited to 50 copies on Lilac cassettes, available soon from Italian Beach Babes.

The tracklisting is as follows:

1. Huffing NV
2. Church Street
3. Urgh
4. I Don’t Wanna Know
5. Bowie Knife One
6. Shuffle Board
7. A Metric Tower
8. Athens Song
9. What D’Ya Reckon
10. I Don’t Know What’s Wrong
11. I’m A Smoker
12. No Way
13. Iz It?
14. Checkers
15. Jarin & Jay Don’t Like This
16. Sand On Your Neck
17. Munchkins
18. Temperton Tecker
19. Jump
20. Illegitimate Love
21. Urgh x 100
22. Shit Priest
23. Don’t Worry Baby
24. Dire Strait’s Brothers In Arms
25. Vampire Jive 1
26. Fingers
27. Amelie
28. Eva
29. Till I’m Dead
30. Danny Elfman

preview: the 1234 festival

Ahead of this week’s The 1234 Festival in Shoreditch FST previews 10 bands to watch out for.

Now in its 3rd year The 1234 showcases the area’s musical triumphs and innovation, featuring emerging new acts and musical movements alongside groundbreaking artists that have cut their teeth in East London. Ranging from 90s inspired shoegaze to 70s inspired disco The 1234 Festival covers it all.

1. a grave with no name – and we parted ways at mt. jade // myspace

2. dum dum girls – jail la la // myspace

3. la shark – 1958 // myspace

4. mazes – i have laid in the darkness of doubt // myspace

5. veronica falls – beachy head // myspace

6. vivian girls – my love will follow me // myspace

7. sunderbans – road kill // myspace

8. spectrals – it’s ok (not to be ok) // myspace

9. we have band – honeytrap // myspace

10. tronik youth – sheik it // myspace

the 1,2,3,4 festival preview by futuresoundstemporary

suffering jukebox

I have just found an interesting vault of sweet lo-fi tunes over on Soundcloud. Suffering Jukebox aka the record label arm of Manchester’s Mazes have recently put up a superb Jukecast, featuring none other than Mazes themselves, a double hit of Colleen Green, Milk Maid, Former Bullies and Brown Brogues. It’s a great collection of distorted, hazy pop numbers, particular favourites are the bizarre (possibly ill-advised) Blink 182 cover of M&MS and Former Bullies’ Planetarium, which features those immmortal lyrics “We’re going to chapel and we’re gonna get married”. Anyway it’s pretty weird, and you gotta admire that -

Most recently however Suffering Jukebox has released Mazes new 7″ single which includes Cenetaph and Go Betweens. Press is sparse and to track it down is a complex procedure, however FST have kindly reproduced the correlating addresses below, from which you can purchase the tracks. Of course, Suffering Jukebox are no austere, stuffy types, and so the singles are also available on Soundcloud too.

Buy it here - Suffering Jukebox

prize pets – new weirdos

This actually came out last week, and frankly not enough people have written about it so far – on a related note I can’t believe my colleague at FST has failed to write about in my absence, but for better or for worse I am writing about it now – Prize Pets’ New Weirdos 7″ on Sex Is Disgusting. Unfortunately the record is already sold-out on Sex Is Disgusting’s Big Cartel but perhaps you can gaze upon it longingly, one day hoping to own the disorientating magic that lies beneath. In the mean time listen to it here, or simply hold out your hands to the future and wait for one of their orgiastic live shows to pass through – I’m thinking of the lead guitarists bouyant legs as I type this.