INTERVIEW: Ash Emery – I, The Mapmaker
You might not have heard of them right now, but you will soon enough; I, THE MAPMAKER are a tight, well-rounded melodic hardcore band hailing from the South Coast. Their debut EP Searching is due to drop in the middle of this month and we were fortunate enough to have a quick chat with vocalist Ash Emery in the build up to this about the new EP, its themes, how EMPLOYED TO SERVE announced themselves to him and even why a studio with a dog is a great idea…
Ash, thank you for joining me. First and foremost, you’ve created a nice little mystery about I, THE MAPMAKER; you’ve got barely anything on your social media profiles about the band, your songs or general activity. Was this something you fell into or a plan from the very beginning?
Ash: For me, I wanted to do it from the very beginning but when we first started doing it, because I couldn’t post anything about ‘We’ve done this’, ‘We’ve done that’ because we hadn’t done anything, it was just a lot of teasing & breadcrumbs trail. The more the concept got added to the music it just fell naturally and we kept this strange ‘persona’ about it. It works quite well and we just carried on with it because it’s just a bit more interesting!
And it’s clear people have been responding to it, you’ve built up quite a nice little following already! When and how did I, THE MAPMAKER start?
Ash: Oh god…I’d say we played our first show August 2016. It started when I was in a local band with my brother in the Bournemouth/Southampton area that didn’t really pan out. I tried out for another band and didn’t get it, which hit me a bit out of the blue, I got talking to Luke Draper who used to be in ELEPHANTIS and he asked if I’d try out for a new project he was starting, so I did and they asked me to join. Shortly after we recorded the first two singles with Lewis Johns at The Ranch and Luke decided it wasn’t for him anymore, so he left and my twin brother (Perry Emery) came in to replace him on bass. Shortly after Nathan (Kimber) joined on guitar and both Jonny (Browning, drums) and Josh (Graham, guitars and vocals) have been in bands together since they were really young and they went through various lineup changes before anything was written; we just kinda fell into the final lineup.
In terms of the band name, I was already writing lyrically all these songs that were double written – there’s a concept meaning and a personal meaning behind them. I originally told the band the personal meaning and when they asked for a name I discussed this concept I had that underlined all the songs and we came up with the name MAPMAKER, which was eventually extended to what it is today. It all tied in with the mystery as well because for me it meant I could get a bit more creative and weird as much as I wanted.
Talking of concepts, I have picked up on one during my listens of Searching, which by the way I must congratulate you on for such a well thought EP; without wanting to go into the more personal side, what sort of themes is the EP centred around?
Ash: It’s a lot of…I know everyone says ‘Love, loss, grief etc’ but it’s not just that. To give you an idea of a few: Ghostwalker was written about when I auditioned for a band called ACRES and didn’t get it despite having my hopes really set on quite high on it; I then didn’t do vocals for a little while because I thought I was terrible which I wasn’t, I was just harsh on myself! When a few other things in my life didn’t quite work out I decided to persevere and press on, so that feeling of being a bit lost and finding your way joined together nicely with the idea and message that you are better than you actually believe. Both parts of 1933 are about my paternal grandmother; everyone handles grief differently and I tend to find that it hits me a month after the event, whereupon I’ll grieve for a day or two and then I’m fine. I don’t tend to surround myself with it but when she got ill and passed away shortly after, my Dad was in Bulgaria and couldn’t get back so me and my brother had to be there in his place. We had to face the grieving process head on and that’s the closest I’ve been to death and being forced to deal with it. Disbelief is about a very good friend of mine who was treated very badly by someone who she thought cared about her and who I couldn’t believe was capable of the things that he did and it was an amalgamation of that and my hatred for him – there’s also a slight religious undertone but that’s more conceptual than anything. Capsized is just about the importance of friends really, how they can be your light in your darkest hour and Searching is loosely about an ex-partner; we were together for around ten years and she lived in Newcastle so it was pretty long-distance and the song is about that ‘to and from’. Again though, all six songs tie in with the overall concept but we’re going to reveal that a bit later on.
And I’m guessing, given the name I, THE MAPMAKER and EP title, it’s about finding you and finding other aspects of one’s self. Would that be going down the right pathway?
Ash: It is! A very loose part of the concept as well is a man’s wife and child disappear, he doesn’t deal with it in the right way and has to try and find them. That’s probably another discussion for another time because it does take quite a while to explain it!
Fair enough, we’ll save that for the future! How was it working with Lewis?
Ash: It was really, really interesting and quite fun; he’s got a little dog so when everyone’s tracking drums for two days and, as the vocalist you’re doing everything last, you just get to play with the dog all day! To work with Lewis was pretty crazy because he did the ELEPHANTIS record and then after us he did CANVAS and ROLO TOMASSI. Just to be at The Ranch was cool as well; Mourning After by LAST WITNESS is one of my favourite albums of all time and the fact that I was where it had been recorded along with Good Time Boys, The Long Haul and Kerouac was crazy. His assistant at the time, Dom, was a hero as well; it was just a really fun experience and we met some other bands whilst there who we’ve kept in contact with and become really good friends. We really enjoyed it; Lewis knows what he’s doing and he’s phenomenal at what he does.
And talking of other bands, you had Justine from EMPLOYED TO SERVE come in to guest on Disbelief. How did that come about?
Ash: Well, I didn’t really get too much into this chaotic hardcore when I was younger but over the last couple of years I rediscovered a lot of it through Holy Roar Records and a few of us realised we liked a lot of what was on the label, so we started collecting vinyl and listening to a load of new bands. I’d seen the name EMPLOYED TO SERVE pop up quite a bit and a number of people said that we needed to see them live if we got the chance; we ended up seeing them open for PALM READER at The Sanctuary in Basingstoke; it was a funny little venue, the toilets were behind the stage so you had to wait until the bands were finished before you could go! We were getting really into EMPLOYED TO SERVE and their guitarist Sam decided to run, jump on the bar and run along it before jumping into the crowd, spilling about 20 pints in the process; at that moment I just remember thinking ‘This band are incredible’, [laughs] I got talking to them after the show, bought more stuff from Holy Roar, saw them at more festivals and at the Holy Roar anniversary, I might have been a bit drunk or whatever but I remember thinking ‘It’d be cool to get Justine on a track…I’ll go and ask her, what’s the worst that can happen?’ and she agreed! She recorded her section at her home studio, sent it to us and Lewis fitted it into the track and it turned out incredibly well!
When you came to doing your own stuff with the recording, did you find that Lewis wanted you to do anything different with your vocals, or that your lyrical writing changed at all?
Ash: We moved a few lyrics around to make things flow but he never asked us to change anything and vocal wise…no, he just let me run with it which was nice! With some of the clean vocals on the EP, we went with quite belted high range vocals for a while but this didn’t really work out, so we began lower down, layered it up a couple of times and it worked really well. Lewis did give us a few pointers but there wasn’t a massive deal vocally that changed, especially not with mine; he was very accommodating and enjoyed it which was nice – there’s nothing worse than a producer who doesn’t really seem to care and that was comforting because it was our first time really recording a proper space that isn’t a home studio.
Do you feel that this EP will become the nucleus of a full debut album at some point?
Ash: We’ve already got a double A-side written, so we’ll get those recorded soon after the album and that will make it eight tracks overall, but either we’ll add more to that A side and make another EP or we might end up doing a whole album. I don’t think many or even any of the tracks on Searching will be on the next record. We’ve had them for well over a year and we’ve been waiting for the right time, team and people to get them recorded so, in the nicest possible way, we’re a little sick of them! We’re just excited to get these new ideas down and out. We could do a few reprises though – there’s a strange, lounge version of Ghostwalker hidden away somewhere that we could use in the future!
Just put it on the end of an album as a secret track and don’t tell anyone about it!
Ash: Yeah, that could work! We also want to do – well, I hate the word ‘cover’, it’s a terrible word – but if we could put our own spin on a few tracks that aren’t ours, that would be cool. We’ve spoken with a band called LIGHTFINDER from California about doing our own version of the Switcheroo EP that ALEXISONFIRE and MONEEN did where we cover each other’s songs and add a new track or two in there as well, but a lot’s been written for the next record and we’re keen to get Searching out, see where it gets us and go from there. There’s no plans to slow down though!
Good to hear! What’s the plan for the rest of the year? You’ve got your release show at Joiners on May 13th and your appearance at Teddy Rocks Festival coming up, will you go back to the studio, more shows, bit of both?
Ash: We want to try and get to Europe before the end of the year, we’ve got Dom Patience helping us with that; he’s literally ‘Mr. Bournemouth Music Scene’, he’s been organising the local music scene for as long as I’ve been going to shows. He’s helping us with shows, a lot of offers have been put in with bands for a few UK runs and we’ve got a number of weekend-ers planned as well. We don’t really want to stop, it’s taken quite long to get to this stage of releasing the EP and now that’s in place we’ve really got a taste for it and we just hope it keeps snowballing, but we can only see I guess!
Exactly. Ash, thank you very much for your time today, take care.
Ash: Thanks man, speak soon!
Searching is set for release on May 18th via self-release.
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