Noisey's 48 Hour Mixtape makes its way up to Manchester

This summer, Pepsi Max has teamed up with Noisey to challenge a series of musicians to make a mixtape in only 48 hours with the help of some friends. Following the trail of three festivals across Europe where Pepsi Max are hosting a stage – Wireless in London, Creamfields in Manchester and Oya in Oslo – the artists chosen epitomise the sounds and sensibilities of each festival. Following on from the first episode hosted by London’s lyrical firecracker JME, episode 2, directed by Mike Skinner, centres on Murkage Dave of seminal Manchester grime and garage clubnight spurned musical outfit, Murkage.

Murkage Dave carries the task to Manchester, the city that is ‘a couple of degrees cooler and a lot calmer than London’. Eager to move the city on from the nostalgic days of The Hacienda and Oasis, Dave meets up with some alternative Mancunian luminaries on his arrival including legendary Groundbreaker MC Fallacy (half of Broke’n’£nglish, Toddla T Sound and LTJ Bukem’s Logical Progressions series MC DRS), ‘Versatile Don’ and garage bossman Zed Bias, T-Man from genre-jumping collective LEVELZ plus a host of upcoming producers from the city. Up against the clock, they quickly get to work, which sees Dave hanging up his UK garage roots and becoming ‘certified’ in the garage rock world, laying down a break-up song with Acropolis Sound and putting some ‘left-field boss turn up’ on the boil at Blueprint Studios to add a whole new level to the mixtape.

Hard work always pays off and with word of the mixtape on the grapevine, Dave’s mission ends, in typical Manchester fashion, with a rip-roaring house party that sees the main pillars of the Manchester underground united in one building, lighters flashing, phones raised and party cups getting sipped from as the project gets its well deserved airtime.

Join Murkage Dave as he sets to “live by the sword, die by the sword’, embarking on a 48 hour mission to shine a flashlight further into the contemporary Manchester music scene.

Get set for the next episode, which sees the Pepsi Max series leave the UK for some fun on the continent. Watch this space.