The System Of The World

James Chapman is a very talented young man blah blah blah made his record in his bedroom blah blah blah signed by Mute blah blah blah Mercury nominee blah blah blah world tour blah blah blah blah blah from solo-fiddler to celeb-hob-nobber in 12 easy months, an example to us all, talent will always win out, a demonstration of a fair and fateful universe blah blah blah, yes yes yes, we know we know we know.

So you don’t need me rambling on about his music for a few witty yet informative paragraphs, and then posting a couple of songs that you can hear on 50% of the other blogs out there, because that would quite simply be both boring and beneath us. No, you don’t need me to do that. So I won’t.

What you need is me to ramble on about his knob twiddling on the work of others. So I will. Marvellous.

Not happy with creating his home made masterpiece, James Chapman is now having a go at Maps-ing up anything else that comes within grabbing distance. And then, when he’s applied the Maps-ing, he’s sending it back out to the world on free cds that are given away at gigs and that. And with the cds are passwords that you can enter into the Regions section of the Maps website, which lets you get at even more remixes and new tunes and whatever else has been thought up that day. Truly, he is a generous one-man-synth-pop-ish production line.

Here are a couple of Maps remixes of tunes by The Longcut and Kyte. I’m not a huge fan of either band, but these I like.


The Longcut – Holy Funk (Maps Remix)

Kyte – Secular Ventures (Maps Remix)


What I like is that instead of falling into the classic remixers trap of going the same but different (double the length of the intro, beef up the drums, play about with the structure) they’re different but the same (pretty much saying ‘well, your song’s alright, but I’d have done it better by doing it like this’). Kind of like pretending to pat the original artist on the back, but actually sticking on a sign that says ‘NOT AS GOOD AS ME’. But in a nice way. Obviously.

No doubt there will be much more to come from the horrifically talented Chapman in the not too distant future, but in the meantime, if you want the password for the extra Regions tracks, send me an email or something. And cash. Cash always helps.





009. Captain Beefheart - Big Eyed Beans From Venus


Tiny Dancer


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