Maps

Home-made bedroom project goes boom..

“I feel like Bruce Willis in Unbreakable,” says James Chapman, aka Maps. He’s talking about earlier in the year when a lorry smashed into the back of his and his touring band’s van at 80mph, on the way back from a gig in Nottingham. “We were all drunk in the back and falling asleep, and then I thought, ‘I wonder what that was’, took my headphones out, and there was total devastation all around me.” Drummer Ben broke some ribs, and after surveying various other injuries within the group, the decision was made to cancel the rest of the tour. “It could have been so much worse though…” he ponders.
Northampton’s Maps achieves what very few have managed to convincingly pull off in the past. Fusing his electronic sensibilites with a shoe-gazing ethic, he manages to pull off both musical angles with aplomb, and then fuses them together with ease. The result is music that sends you to a completely different time and place, while lyrically, there is also room for both the simple and the complex...