Cypress Key drops ‘Magazine and Jackson’ EP

New Orleans-born musician Mazz has spent decades moving through different corners of the American music scene, from punk and grunge to hip hop, Afrobeat and stripped-back acoustic music. After a decade establishing himself within New York City’s music underground, he eventually returned to the Crescent City, bringing with him years of experience, experimentation and stories shaped by life in the deep South. Cypress Key is the latest project to arise from that return, a fiercely independent solo endeavour centred on documenting the laughter, joy and harsher realities of growing up in New Orleans.

The project gives Mazz complete creative control; he plays all instruments, writes and produces every song, while Darren Blanchard and Lisanne contribute vocals. Guitar and vocal collaborations add further dimensions to a project otherwise driven by one musician’s wide musical experience and determination to create on his own terms. That independence has origins stretching back through Mazz’s career to one of his earliest gigs after his teens took place at the legendary CBGB in New York, before he went on to perform with punk/grunge band ThePests.

Touring across the Northeast and Midwest, he also worked for an Afrobeat label, adding another facet to an already expanding musical vocabulary. After leaving The Pests, Mazz formed the hip hop collective Panda City, where stripped-down acoustic hip hop became the vehicle for memorable performances, including appearances through Sofar Sounds. Each chapter brought a different sound and environment but Cypress Key represents a particularly personal turn.

Returning to New Orleans created an opportunity to move away from depending on other musicians and instead build songs independently. Mazz began writing and recording by himself, playing drums, bass and keys while bringing in other musicians for vocals and guitar, resulting in a project informed by decades of musical exploration but tethered firmly to the place where his story began.

That sense of looking backwards without becoming trapped in the past now runs through the new EP titled Magazine and Jackson. A heartfelt folk rock release, the project chronicles a journey through generational struggles, personal progression, admitting fault and starting over. Cypress Key allows its songs to move through a multitude of sounds, reflecting the complexity of the experiences at their centre.

One moment might be built around warm organ and electric guitar, giving the music a fuller rock-oriented character but elsewhere, the instrumentation becomes more stripped back, leaning into folk textures before opening out into extended guitar solos. There’s no single prescribed route through the EP, these contrasting musical spaces are intentionally left open for listeners to explore and interpret themselves.

The sense of openness feels integral to Cypress Key, with Mazz’s history never having followed a single genre or scene and as such, the project makes no attempt to compress that history into one sound. Punk, grunge, hip hop, Afrobeat and acoustic music all form part of the journey that eventually led him back to New Orleans and towards this latest chapter. Magazine and Jackson carries those experiences without allowing any one of them to completely define the record.

As a project, Cypress Key is about growth and while the stories are based in Mazz’s upbringing and heritage, the EP’s themes reach beyond autobiography. Generational struggles, mistakes, progression and the possibility of beginning again become part of a wider emotional landscape. With Cypress Key, Mazz turns that return into an ongoing creative process and Magazine and Jackson opens the door to an imperfect world shaped by a lifetime of music, experience and the determination to keep moving forward.

Listen to Magazine and Jackson below