The Northampton, UK-based electronic musician James Chapman is Maps, and with his fifth studio album Counter Melodies his attention turns like never before to the crafting of vibrant club techno. Soaking up the flow of the disc’s ten selections, there is little doubt the whole would go down an absolute storm on dancefloors all over the globe, and yet there is a sense the record is “more” than “just” an immaculate series of club bangers. This was Chapman’s stated intention, and he’s succeeded brilliantly. Counter Melodies is out on vinyl, compact disc, and digital February 10 through Mute Records.
In the promotional writing for Counter Melodies, James Chapman downplays the record’s club techno angle a bit, stating that while he admires aspects of dance music, too often the form is merely “functional,” and that instead, he strove to inject a higher level of emotion into the album. As stated in the intro, I do agree that his latest has a little something extra, but I’ll also accentuate how there will really be no hesitation over where to file this record in the shops.
And so, folks who have no quibble with purely “functional” dance jams will be unlikely to express frustration that Counter Melodies isn’t delivering. It’s ultimately a pretty straightforward set, with its gyrational strengths reinforced by Mute’s unusual decision to promote the record not just with the typical gambit of a single or two (“Heya Yaha” was the first) but by making five tracks, effectively side one (I’m surmising), available all at once.
This is an effective strategy, as these cuts, which flow together pretty seamlessly, operate essentially as a mini DJ set. “Witchy Feel” opens the sequence with glistening, chiming cascades before the beat kicks in and raises the energy bar up high; there’s an impressive amount of variation along the way, but the rhythm never flags, at least not until the very end.
“Heya Yaha” features a recurring wordless femme vocal motif, an addition worth noting, as the majority of Counter Melodies’ tracks are purely instrumental. A far easier route toward the emotionalism Chapman was seeking would’ve been an influx of voices throughout. Instead, per the album’s title, the focus is more on crafting invigorating melodic passages. Much of the record is catchy without tipping over into pop territory.
Another winning facet is Chapman’s avoidance of techno formula. For one instance, the opening moments of “Thru Lights” seemed to foretell a techno beat drop that refused to land the way I’d expected it to. That’s nice. Even nicer is “Psyche,” which is drenched in gorgeous keyboard reverberations amid canned bass drum thump incessancy. “Windows Open,” the last of the pre-release five, is engagingly buoyant. It also winds down to a proper end.
But even as the record largely maintains that dancefloor flow, the cuts do still make an impression as individual songs, which bares emphasizing, as many other techno albums’ cuts don’t. Also, a lot of other techno records hover in the neighborhood of 80 minutes long (inching them closer to the nature of true DJ sets), but Counter Melodies keeps it under 50, and that fits Chapman’s non-functional objective pretty well.
The second block of five tracks maintains the energy and freshness as variety is weaved into the repetition. There are textural excursions, like the echoes of dub at the finale of “Lack of Sleep,” that are unique to side two. But “Fever Dream” zeros in on the groove imperative and “My Love Is Like” ramps up Counter Melodies to an effervescent conclusion. The more the record plays, the more apparent Chapman’s avoidance of mere functionality becomes.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
A-
