Maps And Atlases
Perch Patchwork

Someone told me that if Maps And Atlases had released this album a few years ago, they’d now be the U2 of independent music. I think it's a bit nonsense and they deserve a less indecent comparison... like the Pink Floyd of the independent scene. Things in the musical universe have taken and still take a different turn. The circuits for consuming the indie-concept have changed or are fading away just like the tastes, which have experienced a noticeable drift towards electronics. That's why Maps And Atlases are and will remain in a niche, one of just being good, of being beautiful but not too much.

It doesn’t really matter that today this sound isn't “new”, it’s easy to be fooled, yet I can feel something inside, convincing myself of what I have in front of me or what I see or hear, managing to still recognize its greatness, its uniqueness.
So what is the music that we decide will accompany our breaths, the blinking of our eyelashes, the rain-laden clouds hovering above us? On the throne of existential selfishness, there is only one intangibility to save us in simple moments when we want to pretend to enjoy the control of life slipping away, there’s no escape. We camp in the only element that takes over our senses, wrapping us in a soft shell, making us feel special because we are, reminding us that we can appreciate our impulses, it has the taste of a smile, the hue of a tear. It is our weakness standing before us; we listen to it, challenging it head-on, finally on equal terms. We aren’t just happy when we listen to something we love, that’s reductive, we are omnipotent. We bare our hearts, the inscrutability of the unconscious, our chimeras. We make these elements travel through the air, perceiving their frequencies. We, too strong to be weak, too deceived by time to look inside, so deep as to not admit we are ashes. There will be no applause to redeem us, nor smiles to make us rejoice, nor will there exist sadness, we won’t be there to imagine how fantastic the daily lost opportunities are; we won’t be able to realize we are trivial. Music will do that. It will, in our place. And if I concentrate, I see all the opportunities I am creating, I watch my person growing, I see my smile widening, my curious eyes scanning those of others. I see everything and I don’t know what it means, but it is too wonderful to allow myself to impose questions. I can't even be pathetic, this our companion: music, is indescribable I'm sorry. We must surrender to the evidence, impartiality is impossible, I've lost from the start. Are the moments we love then the times when everything around us collapses?

I think about how lucky we are not to wake up one morning without the ability to hear or see anything anymore. We would have only sight to listen to melodies, only hearing to paint the world. Every moment we instead have the whole world to feel what we care about, to see who we hold dear. When I hear bands like Maps And Atlases, writing becomes an obstacle, no degrading self-pity is needed.
Perhaps my brain produces more dopamine than normal when I listen to music, I’m probably a genius on a par with Mozart or Einstein with a predisposition for musical listening, but maybe not. I’m just a 22-year-old kid with cocoa-colored eyes too vain to understand that music neither destroys nor tortures nor rebirths or weans or saves. But I have the stubbornness to believe it as long as I roll my eyes and have the ability to hear frequencies that in a few years will be indistinguishable.
It will be the yellowing leaves of the trees that make me poetic, I promise it won’t happen again, not until the next Lady Gaga album at least.