“Draw a map and get lost.” — Yoko Ono

A couple weeks back, a close friend of mine left on a four-month journey through the Philippines and Indonesia. This trip, which can only be accurately described as an odyssey, has so far taken him from Manila to Singapore, and has given him the opportunity to experience the local people and cultures of exotic locales like Tawi Tawi and Jolo. The e-mail correspondence that I’ve had with him has stirred my appetite for travel, but, being a poor recent college grad, I have unfortunately been stuck in Newark, Delaware. Sweet.

Fortunately, the wealth of great records that have come out so far this year has kept my imagination occupied, particularly the most recent Mapstation release on ~Scape Records, Distance Told Me Things to Be Said. The solo endeavor of To Rococo Rot member Stefan Schneider, the Düsseldorf based Mapstation can be described as a sort of musical travelogue, taking in influences ranging from German techno to traditional African music to dub reggae, all the while filtering the whole mess through a decidedly minimalist lens. The resulting record contains some of the most engaging sounds that I have heard in quite some time, and, since I can’t afford to be globetrotting, I’ve been using Distance Told Me Things to Be Said as the starting point for the musical explorations of my summer, picking apart its obvious influences and revisiting some of the more neglected areas of my record collection.

While the layered synth meditations of fellow Krauts like Kraftwerk and Tangerine Dream may come to mind when first listening to Mapstation, it is the pulsing phase patterns of Steve Reich’s compositions that provide the most appropriate reference point for Schneider’s music. Just as repetitive keyboard arpeggios and drum machine loops begin from a common point and proceed to overlap and evolve into complex tapestries on tracks like Mapstation’s “Sonorities,” so do the percussion patterns and rhythms create swelling, constantly developing beatscapes in Reich’s work, such as “Part IV” from his classic Drumming cycle. What’s more, both Reich and Schneider share a fascination with traditional African percussion. The unique sounds of these instruments lend the work of both artists with an unusual tone and feel that isn’t available with traditional Western percussion.

Add to this highbrow minimalist crossbreeding of African folk music and synthesized Krautrock the studio trickery and pop sensibilities of Jamaican dub reggae, and you start to come close to understanding what Mapstation is all about. Taken from one of the all time classic dub recordings, Augustus Pablo’s King Tubby Meets the Rockers Uptown, “Brace’s Tower Dub No. 2” is a fine example of the sort of dub Schneider so obviously admires. With its skittering snare hits, reverb soaked melodica melodies, and deep aquatic bass lines, this track is one of my all time favorite summertime jams, and it is perfectly suited to high volumes and large quantities of Corona poolside.

As I embark on another day here in Newark, I wonder what music my friend has chosen to soundtrack his island hopping Indonesian adventures. Regardless, when I get my next chance to travel, this record isn’t going to be leaving my ears. Until then, I’m just going to have to lay back, get lost in the musical map that Stefan Schneider has drawn for me, and simply imagine the African plains, Caribbean shores, and German Beer Halls. Now, if only Reich and Pablo had gotten together with King Tubby back in the day, then we’d have a stone cold classic on our hands.

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