Music, Style & Culture

In The Studio: Maps & Atlases

Maps & Atlases fill us in on writing and recording their new album.

Maps & Atlases are currently right in the middle of writing and recording their new album, the follow up to 2010's 'Perch Patchwork'. Working once again with producer Jason Cupp, they've been splitting their time between home and the Another Recording Company in Omaha. Here, the band let us in on how it's all going.

On our new record, we are working with producer Jason Cupp again and have taken a similar approach to recording back and forth between home and the studio. It is fun and positive to be able to record in the comfort of someone’s house, because you are able to dive into the process without the distraction of having to leave to get food or coffee and everything has a casual vibe to it, but it is also positive to have the opportunity to experiment with new instruments, recording equipment and a new environment. The studio that we have been recording at is Another Recording Company in Omaha, Nebraska and it is an excellent place that balances the studio/home feel very well as we stayed in the studio while we recorded there and it was a very nice experience. In addition to the great studio experience that we had while in Omaha, it is interesting to be able to spend time in a city that you don’t have much experience with and have the opportunity to get a feel for it.

One difference between this album and our previous work, is that on our last album it took a little while for the common threads to reveal themselves, whereas this album seems to be thematically cohesive from the beginning, which is an exciting thing. Touring in support of our last album, 'Perch Patchwork', we started improvising quite a bit more during our set and changing things up a bit each night. I think that we grew a lot as band from the new looseness that these parts brought and that there is different kind of energy found on the new recordings because of it. We have also experimented with a lot of new instruments on this record, which is always a fun learning experience. The album will have some songs that will definitely be a challenge technically to perform live, but we look forward to that as well. Obviously the album isn’t quite finished yet so I can’t speak to all of the specifics of how it will end up, but we are having a lot of fun making it and are very excited!