Album: We Can Create 14th May
"One of British music's brightest hopes for 2007" – NMEMaps, aka James Chapman, releases his first single on Mute Records, It Will Find You, on 7th May. Maps has previously released 3 much acclaimed 10” only singles, Start Something, Lost My Soul (which featured in the NME’s top 50 singles of ’06 chart) & Don’t Fear on his own Last Space Recordings. The 11-track long player, We Can Create, is to follow shortly after on 14th May 2007.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 on his battered 16 track recorder in his Northamptonshire bedroom. The results were subsequently co-produced by Valgeir Sigurdsson (Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy, Bjork) and mixed by Ken Thomas (Sigur Ros, Hope Of The States). A hugely ambitious, widescreen and epic record that recalls everything from the far away electronics of Basic Channel and Carl Craig, through the skewed songwriting of Postal Service, Flaming Lips and Grandaddy to the euphoric sound-scapes of Sigur Ros and My Bloody Valentine, We Can Create is a work of heart stopping extremes.Maps is due to announce a number of live dates throughout the whole of May, but for now there is a headline show at London’s prestigious ICA in April and a Great Escape appearance in May.APRIL
23rd London I.C.A.
Tickets for the I.C.A. date are priced at £9 and are available via www.livenation.co.uk or 0870 400 0688.
MAY
19th Brighton Venue tba (with British Sea Power, Bat for Lashes and Tiny Dancers) Maps