it would not be over-exaggerating to say Mazes is one of my favourite UK bands at this moment in time. they are rather marvelous. they do DIY pop music of a sort. you can listen to them here if you like. and read about them below…
So, Mazes, who is lost within the friendly confines of Hampton Court?
We don’t seem to have settled on a line up really. The first things we recorded were just me, my girlfriend Claire, Jay and Jarin… then Jay left and Neil joined, Claire got too busy. And then now our friend Conan is gonna start playing second guitar…it’s transient I suppose, but that can be nice. I like to think we’ll hit on a formula soon.
How long have you been doing this music thing, is Mazes your first band that’s put a record out?
For all intents and purposes
Sex Is Disgusting is a clued up label, how did you wind up hooking up with those chaps?
Well we were based in Manchester initially and honestly there weren’t any like minded bands when we started or we didn’t really know any. A friend of ours Paul had a bizarre job ghostwriting a music blog for Alan McGee (true story) and he wrote about Mazes in a post about Wavves. I think James from Sex Is Disgusting stumbled upon it and liked what he heard. At that point we’d only recorded a handful of songs and we’d never played a show. They booked us to play with Wavves and Pens in Brighton and asked us to do a single…that was like 18 months ago.
Your latest 7″ is DIY / self released, why did you decide to put your own record out and are you hoping to release other bands music as well? How are you going about distributing it?
I’m fortunate enough to work for a really cool guy in Manchester who owns a place called The Deaf Institute… He was like ‘we should start a label’ so we did, the Mazes seven being the first release so I didn’t fuck up anyone else’s record. As far as distribution’s concerned I dunno…we just write people and see if they want it. We have sevens lined up for two Manchester bands called Former Bullies and Milk Maid and then a tape for Brown Brogues… there’s a vagues plan to do a Colleen Green seven which I’m psyched about.
You guys seem to be pretty out on a limb, I’m not sure there’s much around at the moment that you easily fit with. Which is a good thing! What other bands do you play shows with, is there a cross over with DIY punk and hardcore bands, or are you tending to get lumped in with the whole lo-fi indie thing?
We’ve got pretty picky with shows because we’ve played a load that have been promoted badly… we like playing with our friends bands but apart from that, we just need to not lose money and get enough beers to keep us happy.
What do you get out of being in a band, what keeps you going, and holds your interest?
Personally it’s become like a compulsion I spose and it just makes me really happy, most aspects anyway. We’ve had a couple of deals thrown our way and one in particular would’ve enabled us to do this a little more seriously… we’re not purist idiots but we pissed them off and they got sick of us. We had to have a big think about why we do it and what they could offer us just didn’t seem like something that’d make us happy… I mean we’re ambitious but not at the expense of certain things.
Trying hard to work out how to phrase this next one without coming across like a complete jerk – but it seems to me that whenever there’s a new trend in the US (i.e. Captured Tracks etc…) that a lot of bands can pop up in the UK doing kind of the same thing. Do you think that is a terrible blanket generalisation? Are UK bands a lot more autonomous than my gut instinct would suggest, or do bands trend hop?
Yeah maybe… but I think that’s the fault of the british music industry and the press…all that’s changing obviously and it’s getting to the point where we’re all on an even playing field. It’s just as easy for someone in London to hear a new LA band as it is for someone in LA. The DIY scene is the US has been around for years and now UK bands realise that that’s a good way of doing things…people are beginning to see that making music to ‘get signed’ is short sighted bullshit… and completely futile obviously.
This somewhat pointless penultimate question is a holdover from when I first did interviews on this website about 11 years ago… what is your favourite weather condition?
Muggy
What does the future hold for Mazes? Is there anything you’d like to add at this point? Thanks for dealing with this shit!
Gonna sort ourselves out…another seven soon, a 30 song tape album on Italian Beach Babes and then record an album proper over the summer.