Ryan Lott, who’s helmed the synth-rock project Son Lux for the past decade, is the kind of songwriter who can turn the most intimate moments sweeping and majestic. His albums treat crisp, minuscule detail with cinematic grandeur.” Pitchfork…. Around 2008 Ryan Lott asked himself this question: ”Can I make a pop record that doesn’t rely on a verse/chorus formula?” In many ways Lott’s first two releases as Son Lux represent his response to that query. At War With Walls & Mazes and We Are Rising documentone of the most compelling musicians of the 21st century finding a distinctive creative voice, while making strikingly original music along the way. Lott turned to sonic texture as a source of musical sustenance, crafting a dynamic mosaic of sound inspired by the collagist technique of hip-hop beat makers. The soundscapes Lott created merged a panoramic symphonic palette with the propulsiverhythmic urgency of hip-hop.

The only thing missing was a voice, a role Lott hadn’t intended to fill himself. "Some friends helped me to hear in my own voice something that really worked with themusic,” Lott says. "They've both been out of print for awhile. But more importantly, I'm proud of the music, and I feel like it set the right foundation for my catalogue as Son Lux, so it makes sense to bring it back on vinyl and shed some light on it now that the project has a broader audience."Eleven years after his debut as Son Lux, Joyful Noise Recordings is reissuing these first two works on vinyl. A decade after inception, Son Lux has now shifted from Lott’s singular vision into a three-piece ensemble featuring virtuoso musicians Ian Chang on drums, and Rafiq Bhatia on guitar. But Lott’s initial Son Lux recordings still point toward an exciting musical future that contemporary pop music has yet to realize. 

TRACK LISTING

1 Prologue
2 Break
3 Weapons
4 Betray
5 Stay
6 Raise
7 Tell
8 Wither
9 Stand
10 War 1
1 Epilogue

The result of sessions that took place on an old lightship moored on the Thames, April the 11th sees the release of Mazes’ debut album; "A Thousand Heys". The band (formed of Jack Cooper on vocals and guitar, Neil Robinson on drums, Jarin Tabata on guitar and Conan Roberts on bass) admit that the time spent in the boat represented the first time that they were able to concentrate on their performances during a recording session, rather than, as Jack puts it, ‘pressing record and then running over to our instruments to play.’ This relative liberty has allowed Mazes to focus on creating an album that captures the refreshing spontaneity and looseness that characterised their 30-track Italian Beach Babes mixtape, whilst simultaneously refines the sharp instinct for a pop hook that can be found in their back catalogue of 7”s and splits.

Mazes formed in Manchester in early 2009 and began their life touring with Pens and Wavves before going on to share stages with bands such as Deerhunter, Thee Oh Sees, Sic Alps, Dum Dum Girls and Crocodiles. Whilst these bands are peers and contemporaries, Mazes are not an act swayed by fashion or influenced only by what is happening immediately around them. “A Thousand Heys” is a tapestry of collective influences that draws on the band’s multi-national constitution (Jarin is from the US, Neil from New Zealand) and sees them dart in and out of their record collections with the same enthusiasm and sense of fun as the two wide-eyed kids messing about in front of the camera on the album’s cover. The opener "Go Betweens" is a song influenced by the honeyed, major-key pop of the band the song’s title references, but with New York Dolls guitars, Buzzcocks intensity and Big Star-esque nihilist lyrics. At other times, as referred to by Marc Riley when he called them a ‘sort of really garagey Kinks’, they can sound like a British Invasion group; a syncopated McCartney bassline kicks in during a chorus that starts with a ‘Hey!’ on "Surf & Turf", with lyrics that actually reference ‘The Beatles at JFK’.

A band that has been extensively covered on the blog scene, much has already been made of Mazes’ ability to juxtapose measured three-minute pop songs with short bratty blasts. Although there is no "Painting of Tupac Shakur", the thirty second thrash punk song found on their split with Spectrals, songs such as "Till I’m Dead" prove they can still shred when they want to, whilst "Eva" references the aforementioned IBB mixtape in sounding like a sketched out idea, a fleeting moment in time recorded for posterity. Conversely, the Dunedine Sound influenced "Cenetaph" is a beautifully controlled pop song that demonstrates the band care more for songcraft than correct spelling, whilst "No Way" recalls early REM.

Perhaps the most thrilling moment on the album is when Mazes combine these two elements in the shape of lead single "Most Days". In under two minutes the band encapsulate their sound with a driving pop song full of hooks and sugared melody that makes way for a frenzied ending of flailing guitars and crashing drums, the lyrics somehow simultaneously capturing both the recklessness of youth and the terror of mortality in about three lines. Throughout the album Jack Cooper proves himself to be a versatile vocalist, able to recall the impassioned yelp and ‘oohs’ of James Mercer in one instance, and the sigh of Elf Power’s Andrew Rieger in the next. The lyrics on the album display a similar range, from the idealised childhood and subsequent collapse into post-adolescent apathy of "Summer Hits/ J&J Don’t Like", to the vivid vignette of "Cenetaph", the youthful forcefulness of "Death House" to the Swell-like world-weariness of "Wait Anyway".