Maupa - Interview

Second Maupa album "Run, Sleep, Run" is a beautiful work of art! Talking about it and other things, here is the singer and main songwriter David Boon.

Could you please shortly introduce yourselves for our readers as this is your first interview for us (hopefully one of the many to come)?

Well, we are Maupa - David, Anthony, Paddy, Adam, Lorcan and Matt - yes six of us. We are from the north west of England and this is our second album.

We've been listening "Run, Run, Sleep" quite a lot for the last couple of weeks and we think that its an amazing and unique album. What can you tell us about it? Has it been traditionally difficult making it considering that it's your second album?

I will have to say no and yes, haha, sitting on the fence. Well writing it wasn't difficult. I write a lot and had most of these songs knocking around for a while knowing that they should be on a record. But the process of getting the album made was somewhat difficult. The record industry is changing very rapidly and companies are getting ever more cautious of doing things the more traditional way, if that makes sense. Also it seemed to be a long drawn out process, spanning more months than we would have liked but it was unavoidable. So I guess that does start to cause cracks in the confidence in the writing process, when you have to much time to dwell on things. Plus the fact we recorded it in 3 different places. Joe who produced it with us had to set up a studio from scratch each time. That requires a lot of concentration from everyone to stay focused.



Throughout the album, a mixture of genres can be heard. Where did you find influences for all of these?

From where ever you may hear an influence seeping in there. As I said the songs had been written over a period of time, different things going on. I have journals of ideas so I guess they are just musical extracts, stuff we've heard, felt, thought. It was a worry, well to me at least, that the songs were too different but in the end we just thought fuck it. I guess they jump around a lot but rather that than 10 of the same song.

Was it a conscious decision influenced by music you listen to or a natural direction of sound that the bend took?

Hmm, it just happened. We could have spent a long time trying to reign the songs in and balance the album out but we wanted it to be as spontaneous as possible. I think that because they had been written at different times too meant they were always going to be different. In the end we just wanted to get it down on record and move forward.

Speaking of your sound - all of the songs are very complex and have many layers contained within. So we were wondering how does it all work live and how do your songs get created?

We are very complex - we would like to think - hehe..six people all with different ideas. It's about knowing what ideas to leave out I guess. We wanted to make an honest album that we could just set up and play from start to finish. The songs start in many different ways with us - played on an acoustic, a jam... There seems to be quite an huge amount of positive reviews of the new album. I mean, NME gave you an 8/10. Is it all helping to you to be heard? There days music scene seems to be so overcrowded that its sometimes great bands go overlooked.

To be perfectly honest, it's not helping us as much as we would like. You are right bands do get overlooked. Can you help?! You have to go out and play and do what you do.

I've noticed that you have always been very active through your Myspace. So what is your opinion on things like that? Also, what is your opinion on all the release schemes going around these days? Do you think the future of music is online or that these are just clever marketing plots that work in a certain moment?

Well I'm doing this interview via email - the future is always happening. A musician has to make a living somehow though. I still prefer to go out and buy a record, but that's me. As you say in this ever increasing market the web is a good way of listening to and discovering new music.
For us it is a good way of keeping in touch with people who listen to us. We are not ones for bombarding people and annoying people though. Finally, what do you read and listen to lately?

Just read Ringo Levio - amazing book.. listening to - hmm.. tapes and tapes,tv on the radio,chad vangaalan,kings of leon,albert hammond jr,beruit,led zeppelin,eddie cochran,miles davis,mercury rev,sinatra,common,broken social scene,pj harvey........it could go on and on.

kris // 06/05/2009