MAP
Map were formed from the smoking wreckage of The Wilder Shores, an Anglo/Australian London-based band who had at some time or other had such luminaries as ex Birthday Party drummer Jeffrey Wegener and Louise Elliot from The Saints and Laughing Clowns fame. After singer Steve Aland left, the Map lineup was born with drummer Simon Walker, guitar mangler Emil Smith and Wilder Shores new boy, bass/sax player Chris Anderson whom they'd met in a queue for Sonic Youth outside Harlesden's Mean Fiddler in 1986.
The trio regugarly jammed at Show Me Studios, a psychedelically squatty utter shithole of a place in Kentish Town for the next few years sometimes augmented by a second drummer Angus Duprey who had previously done bits with Terminal Cheesecake, Gaye Bykers On Acid and Ad Nauseam. These freeform sessions were to later become something of a template for future Map songs as the noise evolved.
The next stage was when drummer Simon went back to Australia and Chris and Emil started jamming in Emil's basement in St Thomas Road, Finsbury Park where they started sticking bits of jams together and creating a new music form, as they perceived it, later to become known as Pronk.
By this time it was 1991 and Sarah Underdown entered the picture armed with a set of lungs and an eagerness to give these structures some verbal form so they went to La Rocka studios down Turnpike Lane regularly to make one unholy racket. Sarah also brought along her keyboard which helped open out the sound.
Inspired by such contemporaries as Silverfish, Big Black, Sonic Youth, Cardiacs, Gong, Henry Rollins Band and Primus, the group set about finding a drummer, eventually finding Michael Rother, a straight-edge Fugazi-style player with a jazz feel and the willingness to attempt some of the more wayward time signatures that the band utilised. It was all about pushing the limits and flying through super-fast time changes with weird synapse-splitting monster riffs but with rewarding pay-offs of beauty between assaults.
Organ fanzine, a regular London underground publication with a love of amazing bands who didn't otherwise get the press, picked up on the first demo tape entitled You Are Here (by Map - geddit?), came to see the band and then started booking gigs for them. They played with other exciting and interesting bands at these gigs like Cardiacs, Skree, Huge Baby, Poisoned Electric Head, Panixphere, Sea Nymphs, Wizards of Twiddly, Die Cheerleader, Experiment, Brain of Morbius, Gag, Buntychunks, Fear of Fear, Dangerous Bend Mirrors (to name but fourteen) around London mainly.
Map's first EP "Doesn't Always Get" came out as the fourth releases on Organ’s then newly formed offshoot record label ORG on 10 inch vinyl at which point they split up. Not the end of the story though... Map played their last gig as a four piece at The Junction in Cambridge, after which Michael Rother hooked up with Moonshake on drums and Sarah Underdown joined up with chanteuse, Pinkie MacClure, on keyboards. Chris Anderson got busy with lo-fi scuzz rockers, Supermodel and Emil Smith started chilling with post rockers, Ember as well as Skree, the jazz inflected groove/noise freeformers with whom Map had often played.
MAP was still burning away on the inside though, and Chris and Emil started up their former noise therapy sessions again. This time there were no gigs, just a vague commitment to keep playing so long as the magic continued. Time passed, other bands came and went, Michael returned to Germany, Sarah too found herself there. Supermodel burned brightly for a while bringing with it many airmiles and three albums before burning out in financial despair. Meanwhile Map slowly plugged away with no constraints, knowing that a body of work was taking shape. ORG records put out the odd new Map track on their Organ Radio compilation series and people kept asking for more. With Supermodel burnt out and panic attacks the norm, life became an endurance exercise until Chris had a baby daughter and got the hell out of London to live in Brighton. Emil eventually made it down to the same town in 2003 by which time they had recorded the album "Genetic Malfunctions Triggered by Events". Map recorded this album thanks to Wolsey White who was Supermodel‘s lead guitarist and shared a similar sonic sense as Chris and Emil. He also had a recording studio.
The trio regugarly jammed at Show Me Studios, a psychedelically squatty utter shithole of a place in Kentish Town for the next few years sometimes augmented by a second drummer Angus Duprey who had previously done bits with Terminal Cheesecake, Gaye Bykers On Acid and Ad Nauseam. These freeform sessions were to later become something of a template for future Map songs as the noise evolved.
The next stage was when drummer Simon went back to Australia and Chris and Emil started jamming in Emil's basement in St Thomas Road, Finsbury Park where they started sticking bits of jams together and creating a new music form, as they perceived it, later to become known as Pronk.
By this time it was 1991 and Sarah Underdown entered the picture armed with a set of lungs and an eagerness to give these structures some verbal form so they went to La Rocka studios down Turnpike Lane regularly to make one unholy racket. Sarah also brought along her keyboard which helped open out the sound.
Inspired by such contemporaries as Silverfish, Big Black, Sonic Youth, Cardiacs, Gong, Henry Rollins Band and Primus, the group set about finding a drummer, eventually finding Michael Rother, a straight-edge Fugazi-style player with a jazz feel and the willingness to attempt some of the more wayward time signatures that the band utilised. It was all about pushing the limits and flying through super-fast time changes with weird synapse-splitting monster riffs but with rewarding pay-offs of beauty between assaults.
Organ fanzine, a regular London underground publication with a love of amazing bands who didn't otherwise get the press, picked up on the first demo tape entitled You Are Here (by Map - geddit?), came to see the band and then started booking gigs for them. They played with other exciting and interesting bands at these gigs like Cardiacs, Skree, Huge Baby, Poisoned Electric Head, Panixphere, Sea Nymphs, Wizards of Twiddly, Die Cheerleader, Experiment, Brain of Morbius, Gag, Buntychunks, Fear of Fear, Dangerous Bend Mirrors (to name but fourteen) around London mainly.
Map's first EP "Doesn't Always Get" came out as the fourth releases on Organ’s then newly formed offshoot record label ORG on 10 inch vinyl at which point they split up. Not the end of the story though... Map played their last gig as a four piece at The Junction in Cambridge, after which Michael Rother hooked up with Moonshake on drums and Sarah Underdown joined up with chanteuse, Pinkie MacClure, on keyboards. Chris Anderson got busy with lo-fi scuzz rockers, Supermodel and Emil Smith started chilling with post rockers, Ember as well as Skree, the jazz inflected groove/noise freeformers with whom Map had often played.
MAP was still burning away on the inside though, and Chris and Emil started up their former noise therapy sessions again. This time there were no gigs, just a vague commitment to keep playing so long as the magic continued. Time passed, other bands came and went, Michael returned to Germany, Sarah too found herself there. Supermodel burned brightly for a while bringing with it many airmiles and three albums before burning out in financial despair. Meanwhile Map slowly plugged away with no constraints, knowing that a body of work was taking shape. ORG records put out the odd new Map track on their Organ Radio compilation series and people kept asking for more. With Supermodel burnt out and panic attacks the norm, life became an endurance exercise until Chris had a baby daughter and got the hell out of London to live in Brighton. Emil eventually made it down to the same town in 2003 by which time they had recorded the album "Genetic Malfunctions Triggered by Events". Map recorded this album thanks to Wolsey White who was Supermodel‘s lead guitarist and shared a similar sonic sense as Chris and Emil. He also had a recording studio.