Artist:
MAPS
Label:
MUTE RECORDS
Video:
“IT WILL FIND YOU”
Director:
Atticus Finch
Add Date:
July 31, 2006

Good day music video lovers! It’s Andy Gesner and the tireless staff from HIP Video Promo, back with another intriguing video from an artist boldly following a personal vision. maps is James Chapman, andWe Can Create is his dazzling debut-full length. Recorded on a 16-track, We Can Create sounds as lush and trance-inducing as any big-budget release we’ve heard in the past decade. Credit Chapman’s unerring arrangement sensibility for that – he’s got the soul of a hypnotist, and beats, synths, guitars, and hushed vocals are his pendulums. We Can Create is coherent, but it’s varied, too – for every radio single like the undeniable “It Will Find You”, there’s a glittering epic like “When You Leave”. Fans of Ride, Mercury Rev, Flaming Lips, and Spiritualized will rejoice; there hasn’t been a pop group so convincingly dreamy since the halcyon days of shoegaze in the early Nineties.

The Northamptonshire producer and songwriter is just building buzz here in the US with main page features on iTunes and substantial radio play from supporters KEXP ( Seattle) and KCRW ( Los Angeles) and back home in the U.K., he’s already made waves in the indiepop underground – and, increasingly, in the British mainstream press.IndieLondon gave “We Can Create” a perfect score, praising Chapman’s “bedroom genius”, and calling the album an “other-worldly gem that’s by turns laidback and bewitching, yet commercial enough to appeal to mainstream pop culture.” The Guardianraves about the album’s “marvelous hooks” and “simultaneous atmosphere of lo-fi intimacy and widescreen lusciousness” and compares maps to the epochal My Bloody Valentine. And while Chapman performed and recorded We Can Create on his own, he’s had some help in the mixing booth from veteran sonic pioneers: engineers Valgeir Sigurdsson (Bjork) and Ken Thomas (Sigur Ros) have helped to landscape these haunted visions. Outfitted with a full band, Chapman will be taking maps on the road this summer; he’ll be touring the festival circuit in Europe, and a stateside debut will be coming this Fall.

Shot by Chris Richmond of the Atticus Finch production team (Depeche Mode, Matinee Club), the video for “It Will Find You” is a restless, mesmerizing look at a city in a state of devolution and a countryside in the midst of change. Richmond’s camera first finds Chapman in a tower high above the London skyline, staring back at the lens impassively; later, he stalks the streets, his expression unfathomable as he scans the walls and storefronts. Time-lapsed footage of clouds stream across the sky, and beams of sunlight cut through the air like knives. There’s a sense of great foreboding and mystery, and of symbolism writ large – each brief shot of decaying buildings and drooping trees seems to portend some cataclysm in the works. Nature, it seems, has arrived in the capital to reclaim its dominion. Clouds have gathered in the western sky; sunlight and the wind will erode these towers, absorb these streets, and embrace these high, decaying windows.

Mute Records has done it again, and we’re proud to be working together with their crew to bring you this exquisite music video. We have copies of We Can Create available to you should you covet them for your on-air giveaways, so don’t hesitate to be in touch. If you need more info, call Andy Gesner at 732-613-1779 or e-mail us at info@HIPVideoPromo.com. You can also visit www.Mute.com to find out more about Maps.

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