After teasing about his new album since the start of ’09 — presenting a slate of new track titles on MySpace in January, then saying about them in February that he’s “never been more confident and excited” — Maps frontman James Chapman has now announced via press release that said album will be called Turning the Mind and will be released October 20th.
Still refusing to shy away from big promises, Chapman states that Turning the Mind is “the fully formed manifesto.” (His first album, We Can Create was, in contrast, simply “the birth of Maps.”)
But there’s also some pretty interesting ideas at play, not just pretty, flowery hyperboles. Keeping very much in his vein of indie electronica, Chapman here explores “themes related to the human mind and the way certain stimuli, particularly chemical, can affect the mind in different ways.”
Chemical: Meaning THC or SSRI’s? Well, the album’s title comes from the Buddhist-influenced, cognitive-therapy practice of mindfulness, while Chapman says that the “journey of extremes” the music takes might mean, for example, depression to euphoria. So maybe Xanax, then just X?