play all songs: hi-fi

Alex Marczak

Plays: 3007 - Downloads: 391
music pictures stations promoteband forum email

Alex Marczak
Alex Marczak Bio:

Alex Marczak wrote his first song at 11 years old, and it was rubbish. By age 13 his songs that were beginning to show glimmers of listenability; by age 16 he'd discovered Counting Crows and Radiohead and was learning to emulate their passionate dislike for everything in the world; between 16 and 18 he learned how to record and mix songs; between 18 and 21 he learned how to sing in tune; and finally by age 23 he'd realised that there are more interesting things to write about than being miserable ("depression is the beginner's emotion" - M. Bellamy).

Alex is a musical allrounder, equally at home singing, playing piano/guitar, performing live, recording and producing. His most notable achievement to date is winning a national songwriting competition judged by singer Chris Martin, promoter Harvey Goldsmith and DJ's Mark Radcliffe and Mark Riley. He has also been played on BBC West Midlands and has featured as an unsigned artist of the week on XFM Manchester.

Until recently, Alex has predominantly been a bedroom-album-maker, creating 8 full albums, the most of recent of which is titled This Mess I've Made. Alex can now be found playing acoustically around Manchester, as well as playing guitar for The Modern Ilk and singing for Mount Fabric. He is also joint leader of E.B.A Promotions, a team dedicated to organising gigs for hundreds of bands in Manchester across many venues.

Alex is as ambitious as any musician you will ever meet and is always on the lookout to make new friends and as much music as possible.


"A Girl With A Crush" » Pop Rock 0 Comments - Rate it! - Add to favorites!
Alex Marczak - A Girl With A Crush  » play hi-fi
 » view lyrics
 » view code
This was about the aftermath of an apocalyptic breakup. On the one hand there are the writings from the girl's diary and on the other hand there is the boy who is surveying the bleak near future. It's certainly not one of my favourite songs, it broke the longest dry spell of writing I'd ever had and it's practically thrown together but people seem to like it so I keep in circulation!    

"Blood" » Acoustic 0 Comments - Rate it! - Add to favorites!
Alex Marczak - Blood  » play hi-fi
 » view lyrics
 » view code
One can forgive but one can not forget.

(Sounds like a movie caption that doesn't it!)
   

"Elliot's Song" » Pop Rock 0 Comments - Rate it! - Add to favorites!
Alex Marczak - Elliot's Song  » play hi-fi
 » view lyrics
 » view code
Download it at http://indiestore.7digital.com/thismessivemade

On a superficial level, it's about watching too much Scrubs (and by too much I mean 15-20 episodes a day...). On a much deeper and more pretentious level, it's about the crazy phenomenon of when you get so involved in the life of fictional characters that you start to confuse them with people in real life. Maybe you don't know what I'm talking about. Well, you know how at the end of a brilliant novel you've been reading all the time you sometimes get a feeling of "oh... it's stopped... what do I do now?" Well, this is just an extension of that. You only need to look at the soap opera culture to realise that people love to get lost in other people's lives and it's all too evident to me that people, including myself, sometimes forget that just because something happens on TV, that's not necessarily the way it works in the real world. (I remember at school that the sort of people that would cause great dramas out of nothing in their relationships often tended to be the type of person that loved to obsessively watch various TV drama series). Well, Elliot's Song is the story about desperately hoping that things will turn out ok, like they would do if they were on TV, and then ultimately giving up hope, because they're not.
   

"The Man Who Doesn't Laugh" » Pop Rock 0 Comments - Rate it! - Add to favorites!
Alex Marczak - The Man Who Doesn't Laugh  » play hi-fi
 » download hi-fi
 » view lyrics
 » view code
This song is about lots of people, and it's about a very confused time in my life. I'd been having a bit of a writer's block at the time so I sat and begun to write about some of the people I'd met over the last half a year or so. The girl in the song is the combination of at least 3 people, all of whom I found myself thinking about a great deal. The last 2 lines are the key to where the song is coming from (which is probably why I stopped at that point) - it's about allowing myself to fall for people, something I'd never previously allowed myself to do.    

"Eye Contact" » Pop Rock 0 Comments - Rate it! - Add to favorites!
Alex Marczak - Eye Contact  » play hi-fi
 » download hi-fi
 » view lyrics
 » view code
On a general level this is about how easily groups of friends can turn against each other when they take sides following some dispute between 2 of them. It has always amused me how friends often feel hateful towards someone who has dumped their friend even though they invariably have no idea of the full details. People are so closed minded when it comes to breakups. Anyway, more specifically, it's about 2 friends who fell out for a year or so because one of them went out with someone the other disapproved of, and all the friends chose their sides and stuck to them. This song is about the moment they met up again and decided to put it all behind them.    

"Broken" » Pop Rock 0 Comments - Rate it! - Add to favorites!
Alex Marczak - Broken  » play hi-fi
 » download hi-fi
 » view lyrics
 » view code
This is where the whole idea of the album Charlotte's Diary came from, it was all inspired by this amazing piece of writing that I read detailing a 16 year old girl's journey off the rails. In a way this is just that story set to music.    

"Mars And Back" » Pop Rock 0 Comments - Rate it! - Add to favorites!
Alex Marczak - Mars And Back  » play hi-fi
 » view lyrics
 » view code
Download it at http://indiestore.7digital.com/jamarczak

This was a song about my friend Marie and her gift to make boring things seem exciting (to me at least!)
   

"Dark Star" » Pop Rock 0 Comments - Rate it! - Add to favorites!
Alex Marczak - Dark Star  » play hi-fi
 » view lyrics
 » view code
Download it at http://indiestore.7digital.com/thismessivemade    

"Happiness Is Mine" » Acoustic 0 Comments - Rate it! - Add to favorites!
Alex Marczak - Happiness Is Mine  » play hi-fi
 » view lyrics
 » view code
There are 2 perspectives in this song, both share a frustration and lack of control. Character 1 is falling in love and is trying to snap out of it. Character 2 has already fallen and is worried that it is slipping away.

Watch a live recording at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WSjTiCch1o
   

"(Alice) I Hate You" » Pop Rock 0 Comments - Rate it! - Add to favorites!
Alex Marczak - (Alice) I Hate You  » play hi-fi
 » view lyrics
 » view code
Download it at http://indiestore.7digital.com/thismessivemade

(Alice) I Hate You is about girls who let things go too far and then punish themselves in strange ways. It's amazing how many girls I know who would do anything to blot out a particular relationship from their past. Maybe this is because guys don't generally feel exploited in the same way that girls do after a breakup. I vividly remember that I came up with the chorus lyrics in the shower! An important thing for you to note is that I barely wrote any of the music in this song, I arranged it and remixed it a bit but it's mostly Gareth Davey's work. All the synths are played by him.
   

"For You To Read" » Alternative 0 Comments - Rate it! - Add to favorites!
Alex Marczak - For You To Read  » play hi-fi
 » view lyrics
 » view code
Download it at http://indiestore.7digital.com/thismessivemade

For You To Read is definitely one of my favourite songs on the new album. It used to be a fairly boring acoustic guitar song, and it ended up sounding like this. I came across the sound clip the other day and added it in, I'd been waiting for ages to find the write bit of speech to fit with the song. It's from an interview with an author I've never heard of (think his name is Roger Dean Kiley) and it's just him talking about why he started writing. That's what the song is about, why people who write write. Unsurprisingly, it's often because someone has something to say, but doesn't feel comfortable speaking it, so it gets wrapped up in something creative like a poem or a song. But even more subtle than that, I think that many people write about themselves without even realising it, people scrawl things everywhere that they want other people to find, on tables, on toilet walls, on scraps of paper, even in things like Facebook and Myspace update phrases. There have been times in my life when I've felt that the only way I am actually communicating with someone is through the little messages that are left behind in various tiny pieces of disgardable artwork. Maybe this all seems strange to you, but trust me, there are people all over the place who are just constantly leaving clues everywhere to tell nobody how they're feeling because they don't know how to just say it.