If this review is short it's because I find it hard to describe music that is
truly original. Imaginary Maps are the dreamchild of VEO, a musician based in
Santa Barbara. It doesn't sound like anything else I can think of. – it has
guitar, piano, electronic keyboards, occasional banjo, blues harmonica, viola
(he obviously has picked the session musicians very carefully) and samples
thrown in. It's a rare talent to be able to take all of these instruments and
styles and mix them together so cohesively. It has very dense instrumentation
that fills every available area of the harmonic spectrum and verges at times on
the claustrophobic. It's always interesting and sometimes challenging.
VEO's voice reminds me of post-punk bands like A Certain Ratio and Dub Sex and
is used as a sound texture and not just as some singing over the music. California
Man is just magnificent – guitar and a bit of country twang banjo with
sweeping melodic vocals and guitar. Maybe the songs are a bit similar in mood
and texture but you just need to view the album as an extended mood-piece – it
is more than a sum of its parts. When you have 40 years of musical endeavour to
draw on, sometimes you need someone to chart it and create the Imaginary Maps
to bring it all together.
