o What: Maps & Atlases, in concert.
o When: 9 p.m. July 13.
o Where: Doug Fir Lounge, 830 E. Burnside St., Portland.
o Cost: $10 in advance, $12 at the door. Tickets through TicketsWest, http://www.ticketswest.com or 800-992-8499.
Maps & Atlases is often described as an experimental folk/pop band. The group’s adventurous approach to sonics suggests that its members are no strangers to effects, processors or other high-tech studio magic.
It turns out this is one time when the ears can play tricks on a listener. The Chicago-based group’s first full-length CD, “Perch Patchwork,” may not sound old school, but it’s actually a very organic production.
“We didn’t use any synthesizer except for a little — and I don’t know if this is technically a synthesizer — but we used a mellotron on a couple of parts,” singer/guitarist Dave Davison said in an early July phone interview. “Other than that, a lot of the sounds that sound synthesized are actually, it would be like me singing, but in a weird way. … There were so many little bizarre things that we did that were kind of just so simple, like let’s try humming this part.”
o What: Maps & Atlases, in concert.
o When: 9 p.m. July 13.
o Where: Doug Fir Lounge, 830 E. Burnside St., Portland.
o Cost: $10 in advance, $12 at the door. Tickets through TicketsWest, http://www.ticketswest.com or 800-992-8499.
For example, that fluttering and humming sound that one hears at the start of the second track, “The Charm,” is not a synthesizer.
“It’s actually just me singing with (producer) Jason (Cupp) beating me on the back, rhythmically to the track,” Davison said. “I was doing it in different intervals and harmonies. It sounds cool, but I think probably people who are really technically minded and have a good understanding of synthesizers and all of those things probably could have been like, ‘Why don’t you just do this? It’s a lot easier.’”
The idea of taking inventive sonics, creative rhythms, and complex instrumental parts, and combining them with accessible pop music has been a key goal for Davison and his band mates — guitarist Erin Elders, bassist Shiraz Dada and drummer Chris Hainey — ever since they formed Maps & Atlases in 2004 while they were art students at Chicago’s Columbia College.
“I think from the beginning, we always wanted to frame it in the context of let’s make this song only a couple of minutes long and, like, make there be choruses and things like that,” Davison said. “That’s really what we still listen to.”
Though group’s members will sometimes listen to avant garde music, they’re more likely to tune in to David Bowie or Van Morrison when driving to a show together, he said. “Or the Talking Heads is a band that we all love. They’re definitely a big influence on our music, for sure.”
The quest to combine the experimental and accessible along with the technical and organic has been exactly that: a journey and a process. The Maps & Atlases sound has evolved and developed considerably over the course of two EPs — 2006’s “Tree, Swallows, Houses” and 2008’s “You and Me and the Mountain” — and now the full-length “Perch Patchwork.”
Davison sees “Perch Patchwork” as a logical progression in the group’s sound, but also a CD that takes some elements of the group’s music to new extremes.
“We had specific things we really wanted to try to do within the record, and we had been working on these songs, which we really liked, basic songs where it would be fun trying to do stuff like tempo changes and key changes and time signature changes,” he said. “We really never did that stuff before.”
Though the EPs’ songs were heavily syncopated, they were in fairly standard signatures and didn’t change tempos or keys. With a full-length album, Maps & Atlases decided to go further, “ and also make a really flowing sounding record,” Davison said.
Another major goal was to give “Perch Patchwork” more of a sense of flow than the EPs possessed. Indeed, the CD has enough variety to give it a flow. It’s both adventurous and accessible, textured while also being energetic.
Songs like “The Charm” (perhaps the closest thing to a conventional pop tune on the CD), “Solid Ground” and “Living Decorations” boast enticing melodies that are only enhanced by creative rhythms and some slightly off-kilter instrumental tones. Other songs, including “Pigeon,” “Is” and “Perch Patchwork,” more clearly highlight the band’s experimental and “mathy” tendencies, but also find room for some melody.
The fact that Maps & Atlases achieves its idiosyncratic sounds and style without resorting to programming or arsenals of effects pedals and triggers will be apparent in the live arena, where this is very much a guitar, bass and drums group. Translating the songs into a format that works can be tricky, Davison said, but that’s something the band welcomes.
“I think both the new record and the EPs present their own challenges and rewards as far as us performing them,” he said. “It makes it really fun, and each of the EPs and this record have really different feels to them.”
Band members see this as a good way to keep challenging themselves as musicians, Davison said. “Hopefully the songs are different enough that it kind of keeps it mixed up for the audience as well.”
