Home Alone
Gig Seeker Pro

Home Alone

| INDIE

| INDIE
Band Alternative Pop

Calendar

Music

Press


"//NEW VISIONS// HOME ALONE - WISHFUL SINKING"

If Orchid Tapes has taught us anything over the years, it’s that when it comes to releases, they always hold off for the juiciest fruit.
Freshly picked from the ever blossoming tree of Toronto talent, Home Alone is a new project by Thomas Mazurkiewicz. From what his facebook states, music and marijuana seem to go hand and hand, which kind of make sense based on the vibes felt on his new EP, Teddybears & Weed.
Mastered by Foxes & Fiction’s Warren Hildebrand, many of the songs seem to dwell in chronic induced dreamland. The arrangements inhabit a lot of very early shoegaze influences, all while building on the raw, unpolished landscapes most dreamy, bedroom endeavours are formed on. Dense, reverby guitar feels like it was kissed by the lips of Bradford Cox’s first fantasies of rising to prominence, and the fleeting vocals tap you on the shoulder, tauntingly leading you into Thomas smokey, atmospheric playground.
The visuals for “Wishful Sinking” are compiled clips of different events, thoughts, and feelings of life. From the fun-filled, horny antics of teenagers, to petting horses, to interpretative dance; a lot of ground is covered in five minutes. The main theme seems to be to always have a well brushed head of hair, which is obviously very important.
Band dudes, please take note.
Teddybears & Weed is out now digitally. Tapes will be available in the near future.
Words by: Max Mohenu
xx - http://diamondatlas.com/


"Weekly Magic Tape #93"

A tape compilation with home alone featured in it

01. Freak Heat Waves - Nausea
02. We Are Loud Whispers - Western Town
03. R.L. Kelly - You're Not The Only Monster From Hell
04. Gleemer - Tarantula
05. Luxury Liners - Valley High
06. GRMLN - Night Racer
07. Brave Radar - Doin' It Right (Sean Nicholas Savage cover)
08. Local Channel - Arctic
09. Day Ravis - Double Act
10. Home Alone - Wishful Sinking - http://www.magicrpm.com/


"HOME ALONE - TEDDYBEARS & WEED"

dream weed pop from Toronto, Ontario, Canada released on tape via Orchid Tapes - http://start-track.com/


"INTRODUCING : HOME ALONE"

Home Alone is the pseudonym of Thomas Mazurkiewicz, the newest addition to the Orchid Tapes family. Living in the quiet Toronto suburb of Mississauga, Tom uses his basement and a modest collection of modern and vintage equipment as his studio to create over-exposed low-fidelity stoner pop songs.

Home Alone’s first release is called Teddybears & Weed, a 7 song EP named after two of Thomas’ favourite comforts in life. Influenced by artists like Bjork, Modest Mouse and Wild Nothing and informed by universally enjoyable life forces like relaxing & getting high, the all-encompassing feeling of love and the company of friends, Teddybears & Weed is a warm and pastel-tinged interpretation of homemade pop that carves out a unique place in the world of lo-fi mid-range headphone jams. - http://orchidtapes.com/


"Home Alone In The Clouds"

Setting aside the projects constant reminder of being stoned, this is a nice collection of tunes from a wave rider looking through foggy glasses while exploring the fruits of bedroom pop. The project latches on to the ride of this generations musical evolution, with a first record worth thinking about. A standout is the album’s title track called “Teaddybears & Weed” which is a bubbly number, overflowing with youth. Nab the record, worth the Free DL, and sounds like tapes are coming out soon. I really like the complete package of this album, dope art to match a cool sound. Well done Dude!

“Home Alone is the pseudonym of Thomas Mazurkiewicz, the newest addition to the Orchid Tapes family. Living in the quiet Toronto suburb of Mississauga, Tom uses his basement and a modest collection of modern and vintage equipment as his studio to create over-exposed low-fidelity stoner pop songs.” ~ Orchid Tapes - http://hazyacres.com/


"Home Alone"

About 18 months back (fuck I'm old) I blogged about garage rock Toronto three-piece Stacey Adams. You probably don't remember. I barely do. Anyway, Thomas Mazurkiewicz of that band recently got in touch about a solo project he was working on. "It's alot different from stacey adams, but im alot happier with the music," he says in the email - and he's not wrong.

The title of the debut EP - 'Teddybears & Weed' - from Home Alone probably tells you a lot about its sound. It's sweet and cutesy while pretty laid-back and a bit trippy. A big step away fromt he scruffy lo-fi rock of Stacey Adams but nonetheless impressive and enjoyable. Obviously I'm not the first person to say this (hiya Crack In The Road and Dots & Dashes), but who cares, give it a listen below or stream the whole EP on bandcamp. - http://basementfever.blogspot.co.uk/


"Home Alone: Teddybears & Weed Cassette"

Before I dive into Home Alone's excellent debut release, please take a moment to appreciate the fact that he named it Teddybears & Weed, and how absolutely amazing of a title that is. Did you do it? Good.

Home Alone is the musical project of one Tom Mazurkiewicz, who makes utterly gorgeous, dreary bedroom dream-pop. What allows Home Alone's debut to stand out above the usual genericism of the hundreds of other bedroom pop composers is two key aspects. First, the lovely production, which is decidedly lo-fi but in the gooey, inviting dimension that has begun to emerge with the tag, which immediately lulls the listener into the songs' worlds. And the songs themselves, which show Mazurkiewicz's willingness to jump between the different boundaries that dream-pop encompasses, producing hazy guitar pop a la Atlas Sound on "Wishful Sinking", tinkering, blurry guitar-drone filled beats like Guilty Ghost on opener "Keep Breathing" or "No One's Awake", or even reduced lo-fi pop like Dead Gaze on "Teenage Tide".

There's a slight weirdness on Teddybears & Weed that seems to come part and parcel with bedroom pop (and would you expect otherwise from someone who would name their release Teddy Bears & Weed), but it never detours from the music, instead feeling more like infusion of Mazurkiewicz's personality straight into the music , like on the Antlers-informed-by-rap title track or the weirdo sound sample/collage "Stuck" that ends the tape. They not only work in the context of the tape, but are above else good songs that regardless. Teddybears & Weed is a wonderful slice of bedroom dream-pop bliss, a great opening salvo, and deserves props just because Home Alone do an awesome cover of Modest Mouse's "Sleepwalking". - http://thecreativeintersection.blogspot.ca/


"On the Horizon: Alone, Jealous, And Stoned. Home Alone."

There’s so much shoegaze oozing about at present. Perhaps too much – we’re drowning in the stuff. Though when it’s as amorphous, and as gloriously inviting as this from a lonesome Torontonian scruff, we ain’t stomping about the place too petulantly. Home Alone is the bedroom endeavour of Thomas Mazurkiewicz and, to plump for immediate hyperbole, is quietly spectacular. Mercifully it has little, to nothing to do with Macaulay Culkin & co. although marijuana has quite patently had a pretty telling effect on the pair of ‘em as Sleep.Walk.In is the immediate standout from an EP adorably entitled Teddybears & Weed. Its wilting guitar resonances smoked out by dense reverb, it’s how Christopher Owens could’ve sounded had he got jacked up on the fumes of the ‘Haunted Graffiti, as opposed to indulging in some grossly fiddle-de-dee Paganism for Lysandre and indeed it betters most of Girls’ back catalogue in the process. Put bluntly, a bright hope. - http://dotsanddashes.co.uk/


"INTRODUCING: HOME ALONE"

The title of Toronto resident Thomas Mazurkiewicz’s debut E.P, under the moniker Home Alone, goes a long way in describing the musical territory that he and other young ‘bedroom’ artists seem to be fond of occupying. Teddybears and Weed is an amusingly neat summation of a brand of wide-eyed, synth and guitar production that sounds born out of introspection, feeling like a kid, and faced with the worrying prospect of having to pretend to be a real, grown up person. As the title suggests, everything on here feels a little hazy – the reverb-drenched vocals on songs like Wishful Sinking and title track Teddybears and Weed are thrown far back into the mix, making it hard to decipher more than the odd lyric. Even so, every little detail feels nicely measured – the guitar on Sleep.Walk.In is simple and unchanging but keeps the song moving perfectly all the way through.

Given Trevor Powers’ recent meteoric rise, comparisons with Youth Lagoon feel somewhat unavoidable – by no means a bad thing. But with this seven track E.P. (available for free download on bandcamp – see below) Mazurkiewicz offers up a lovely and languid set of songs that are accomplished to the point of making any worries about familiar territory seem fairly irrelevant. It’s a less anxious collection than something like The Year of Hibernation or Arrange’s Plantation ­– Mazurkiewicz solution to worrying about things seems to be, according to his bandcamp, the fairly simple combination of the “Music I make, Blunts I Smoke.” It seems to work for him. - http://www.crackintheroad.com/


Discography

Teddybears & Weed

Photos

Bio

Hey there,

My names Tom, I live in Toronto

I have a musical project entitled Home Alone.
I enjoy shoegaze and dreampop and i feel it shows in my music.Last week my first ep "Teddybears & Weed" was released.I'm really excited to have the support of Warren Hildebrand of Foxes in Fiction releasing my ep on his Brooklyn based label Orchid Tapes. In The one week my ep has been out i have received numerous positive reviews from awesome blogs and thousands of listens on my bandcamp.

I have worked on Teddybears&Weed the past year and wanted to accomplish something im really proud of. In the past i have recorded a bunch of songs with my previous band and wasnt at all satisfied with the quality of the recordings. With Home Alone i spent a long period of time fine tuning the sounds and tones and was lucky enough to have Warren Hildebrand (Foxes in Fiction) master it

I was in a band for two years called Stacey Adams. I wrote all the songs and play guitar/sung. We had an ep and played a bunch of shows. I organized a couple shows and then i contacted a local blog/promoter (GoldSoundz), which resulted in a handfull of gigs. Eventually we stopped playing music together and i began working on my solo project.

Oh yeahh,
Sorry about the late submission, the ep came out last week. Timing was something i couldn't control

Hope you enjoy

Thanks

Tom