Moments, sounds, faces, voices ... the fragments of experience that stick in the mind for whatever reason, the things that are retained as memories from life's mess of movement, from passing through a small town without a set of traffic lights, from the person you met in the early hours of a coastal night at least a decade ago, from the mysteries heard about at some indeterminate point in London or maybe just dreamt of in Brisbane.
I remember everything.
The Aerial Maps are a Sydney band based around the vocals and lyrics of Adam Gibson, with Simon Holmes (ex Hummingbirds), Simon Gibson, Sean Kennedy, Tim Byron, AJ Johnsen, Andy Meehan and Lucy Lehmann on board in various musical capacities.
The band is influenced by the bright landscapes and long distances of Australia, of the like described by bands such as the Triffids, the Go-Betweens, Midnight Oil and MFTCC plus the sparser work of the likes of Not Drowning Waving and the Necks, and also, importantly, the folk sensibility of the lyrics of Mick Thomas.
The debut album, 'In the Blinding Sunlight' (released by Melbourne's Popboomerang Records), is a collection of 12 songs covering a wide range of ideas, topics, places and time zones ... from Brisbane in the night, to Barcelona in the afternoon, from Berlin bus-stops to Bondi pubs.
The common linking thing is an honest sensibility that seeks to strip away pretense and speak as directly as possible about how things are (or were) or at least seem to have been when accessed through the haze of memory and years (and/or vodka).
Thus, it's a widescreen view of the world - as seen from an Australian standpoint - and we believe there's no better view available than that.
There's a pretty good interview with Adam here, about all sorts of things ... http://www.amrap.org/fmn.php?pageid=69&nodeid=522
*The live band is usually, but not always, (as in photo above, L-R) Simon Holmes, Tim Byron, Lucy Lehmann, AJ Johnsen, Adam Gibson and Sean Kennedy.
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The new Aerial Maps album is available and can be purchased from
The tunes on it include 'Be Home Before the Streetlights Go On', 'Some Other Dream', a story about London called 'London Still Exists', a little ditty called 'The Shark', plus ''The Building of the Breakwall', 'Those Nights' (with a heavy nod towards Badly Drawn Boy), a song about my father called 'On the Punt' and a broad brush stroke called 'The Great Australian Silence'.
You can hear some of the tunes on the album both below
and at www.myspace.com/theaerialmaps