What THEY say …  “Maps is Northampton, U.K. wunderkind, James Chapman. A mix of electronics, pop and psychedelia, his sound can be found in the scale and ambition of Spiritualized, in the single-mindedness of My Bloody Valentine, in the vibes and good times of the Chemical Brothers and in the melodies of The Byrds.
Recorded on a 16-track in James Chapman's tiny bedroom, Maps' debut album ‘We Can Create’ is a hugely ambitious, widescreen and epic record that recalls everything from far away electronics and skewed songwriting to euphoric sound-scapes. A work of heartstopping extremes, the album's eleven tracks run the full length of the transmission spectrum, from dreamy space-rock to folksy, downtempo whisperings and clattering, thudding noise- pop. A bedroom genius in the truest of senses, the other-worldly atmospherics of Maps are even more amazing for the fact he recorded the whole album without computers, preferring the painstaking process of splicing sounds together.” What WE say … Well it’s certainly divided opinion on one popular and leading online mail order merchant, where it’s been described as everything from Beloved, Aqualung, Sigur Rós, Mogwai, Muse, Radiohead, Mew, 65, and M83 to ‘dull’ and ‘vastly over-rated’. And whilst there’s no denying that tendency of the record to collapse into a black hole of it’s own deliberate and opulent grandeur, the uncomplicated prettiness of tracks like ‘So Low, So High’, ‘To The Sky’ and ‘Liquid Sugar’ suggests it can wrestle free of all that quasi ambient anti-matter and achieve a respectable orbit around the singles charts. The madchester shoegazing proclivities aside, Maps could navigate a pretty nifty route through pop and electro yet. Out now on Mute Records – home of Depeche Mode, Richard Hawley, Add N To X, Can, Goldfrapp, Pole and Throbbing Gristle. We Can Create OUT NOW on Mute Records Relevant sites:
wwww.myspace.com/mapsmusic
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