Interview - Maps

It could be the consequences of a night out in Glasgow, but James Chapman is difficult to interview. He isn't surly, or rock-star arrogant - indeed, he is charming, enthusiastic about music and witty. At the same time, he appears slightly surprised at finding himself on tour and being interviewed.

"It's taken me a long time to get here," he admits, when asked about his expectations for the tour. "I never thought that I'd do a live tour, because I never thought that I'd get signed."

It is this humility - as well as the years spent working away at his distinctive fusion of melody and electronica - that separates James from many of his peers. His well-received album, which has been variously compared to My Bloody Valentine and the intelligent techno that inspired Radiohead's foray into experimentalism, harks back to the original fusions of dance music and guitar pop. Having one ear for the melodic hook and another for lush texture, Maps' tracks are concise bursts of distorted exotica. James' presence on record is gentle, even melancholic, whispering secrets within whirls of guitar and keyboards. His tastes, and approach to making music, are eclectic.

"It's quite mixed: years of hanging around, working on it. I do like stuff that is ambient, but I love classical music as well. Vaughan Williams' Fantasia blows me away every time. I don't listen to a lot of really old stuff - except maybe the Beach Boys. But my real love is electronica: I got into it at university and it was a whole new world for me."

This doesn't mean, however, that he is trying to copy his influences.
"I don't make music on a computer - but I use a sixteen track tape recorder and a drum machine. Every song is made differently - sometimes I record the melody first, sometimes the lyric. And I always wanted to have a band, and not just be me and a laptop. It's more interesting."

In performance, Maps recreate their studio sound using state of the art technology and old school guitar effects to whip up the orchestrated chaos that bands like Sonic Youth pioneered back in the late 1980s. Yet Maps are lighter, more pastoral - perhaps because of James' own background.
"I live in a village outside of Northampton - a nice place to relax in: there's a good vibe and a good scene. I am not really part of the Northampton gothic tradition…"

But comparisons have been made the shoe-gazing scene: bands that followed in the wake of My Bloody Valentine, but were swept away by Britpop.
"Some of my new stuff is a bit more poppy. I'm not so much shoe-gazing as... star-gazing. Yeah, you can use that. Star-gazing."