AFTER the brilliantly varied series of remixes of his work he commissioned and dropped throughout the summer – featuring artists as diverse as soundtracks scion Simon Fisher Turner, Andy Bell of Ride under his GLOK alter-ego, New Order’s Stephen Morris and Barry Adamson – Maps is already busy looking forward to the next thing – a four-track EP which is out next month.
And he’s just unveiled a track from that forthcoming EP, “Sleep Today”. It’s a glorious pop rush, straddling that point where leftfield pop and dance culture and indie meet and swim together, like so many of these islands’ greatest bands and musical moments of recent decades. Even better: take a listen to our embed of it below.
“Sleep Today” stems from those sessions at Maps’ Northants studio which elicited much of the material which went on to form recent album Colours. Reflect. Time. Loss. That stint was followed by additional sessions with the renowned Echo Collective, percussionist Matt Kelly and vocalist Rachel Kenedy. It was decided to save the track over from inclusion on the album as it seemed to somehow stand alone.
James Chapman, the musician behind the Maps moniker, says: “Music has always been a therapy for me, and I definitely have an escapist mentality when creating and listening to songs.
“‘Sleep Today’ is a song that always lifts my spirits when I listen to it, and that is the feeling I was trying to evoke when writing and recording the track.”
It carries, he says, a “positive message about trying to come to terms with the present and looking forward to better times” – get gone, 2020 vibes. It’s time to look ahead.
The EP will also feature a remix of the track by The Go! Team.
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