Genre Profile: Math-Rock
Math-rock is a sound whose roots trace returning to the American hardcore scene with the late-'80s. Wanting to employ hardcore's elements -speed, tightness, dissonance, volume- in more abstract, interesting ways, a scene developed in which bands played irregular rhythms and unconventional guitar fragments in sharp, precise ways.
Where hardcore bands, comparable to their punk forebears, stuck to rock orthodoxy, math-rock bands took influence from uncool sources like Captain Beefheart, Henry Cow, and King Crimson; exploding familiar riffs into strange shapes. In many ways, its relationship to hardcore is similar to no-wave's relationship to punk; but, where no-wave bands championed amusicality plus a complete not enough training, math-rockers held technical proficiency worth addressing.
The sound sprung up in midwestern US cities within the late-'80s and early-'90s, sharing its beginnings -and many of its key musicians- with all the initial flourishings of yank post-rock.
Bastro, whose members would go on to form key post-rock bands Tortoise and Gastr del Sol, were in many ways the first true math-rock band, and their sound -made a long time before math-rock started to become bonafide movement- continues to be seen as definitive illustration of the genre.
The way it Sounds:
Math-rock is, becasue it is name suggests, renowned for its complexity. Where rock'n'roll is eternally stuck in 4/4 time, math-rock bands deliberately employed strange meters like 7/8 and 11/8. Bands flaunt virtuosity, not as individual players, but as one: stopping and starting at irregular intervals, turning on any cash and breaking in new, unexpected directions together.
Vocals tend towards unintelligible screams or becoming completely absent; signature math-rock bands like Breadwinner, Don Caballero, and Hella all instrumental. Guitars don't play familiar chords, riffs, and melodies, but create repetitive patterns -often via fretboard tapping- that will get dissonant or amelodic. And drums are, routinely, the foremost instrument in math-rock bands, ab muscles center of your band's rhythmic sound.
Genre Misconceptions:
Because of the close relationships, crossover of early key musicians, and tendency towards instrumentalism, there may be some confusion between post-rock and math-rock bands and sounds. But that isn't exactly a misconception concerning the genre itself, I suppose.
In which the Name Originated in:
Like countless genre names -twee, shoegaze, krautrock- math-rock was invented being a term of slander, mocking the technical proficiency of the players. The name seemed this kind of natural fit it did actually have no source.
Matt Sweeney from indie-rock outfit Chavez, however, told this (possibly apocryphal) tale within an interview with Pitchfork in the year 2006. "It was invented by a pal of ours being a derogatory term for a band me and James [Lo] took part in called Wider," said Sweeney. "His whole joke is that he'd watch the song and never react in any way, and then take out his calculator to determine just how the song was. So he'd call it math rock, and it was a total diss, since it needs to be."
If this broke:
Well, math-rock certainly never started. No math-rock band ever became famous, and also the genre itself never took a powerful hang on the pop-cultural consciousness.
But, if once in which math-rock first had been a noticeable underground movement, it was circa 1995. The genre's patron saint, Steve Albini, became an amount of big counter-cultural clout; from his acerbic writing in zines like Forced Exposure and English weeklies like Melody Maker, his production for bands as big as The Pixies and Nirvana, and the role out front of massive Black and Shellac.
Record labels like Touch and Go and Skin Graft were fostering rosters loaded with bands making complex, dissonant, angular guitar-rock. And a new crop of bands -US Maple, Don Caballero, A Forest, etc- were furthering the concept that it was a real movement, that a new, fierce sound was establishing itself.
Math-rock never really went beyond that; never really became just a a sub-strain of the underground. But if the genre stood a amount of time in sunlight -a amount of time in which future generations could look back on since it's 'golden age'- it absolutely was then.
Defining Albums:
Bastro, Diablo Guapo (1989)
Breadwinner, Burner (1994)
Don Caballero, Don Caballero 2 (1995)
A small Forest, Flemish Altruism (Constituent Parts 1993-1996) (1996)
Hella, Hold Your Horse Is (2002)
Current State:
Although it has little cultural capital as some happening movement, the sounds with the genre are alive. There's a cult community of fiercely-loyal math-rock purists sticking true to the sound -for whom a band like Japan's Lite, tastefully instrumental and post-rock-ish, are pin-ups- but a lot more interesting happen to be a current run of bands who, whilst essentially math-rock, aren't stylistic purists, and also have thus found much crossover.
Battles are essentially math-rock royalty; founded by former Don Caballero/Storm & Stress leader Ian Williams, and featuring super-tight former Helmet skinsman John Stanier. They've publicly abhorred the evocation from the old genre, nevertheless the band's dancefloor-friendly jams are designed over the same exact lines of repetition and sophisticated polyrhythms.
Fang Island are, underneath their Andrew W.K-styled totally-awesome bro-down-ness, a math-rock band: all chaotic riffing at odd angles. Foals and This Town Needs Guns, a pair of bands from Oxford, England, both grew from the scene of local math-rock nerds (citing largely-forgotten US math-rockers Sweep the lower limb, Johnny as key influence), but have applied the genre's elements to pop songwriting, creating a sort of math-rock/dance-punk hybrid.
Marnie Stern, the fretboard shredding guitarist from New York, has earnt plenty of critical acclaim and notoriety for, essentially, feminizing ridiculously-complex, hyper-virtuosic punk. Stern's genre credentials check out, too; she's collaborated with Zach Hill of Hella and Robbie Moncrieff of what is Up?, and toured with math-rock true-bloods Tera Melos.
And few ever reference either band over these terms, but both idiot-savant noise-pop outfit Deerhoof and ridiculous surf-rock kids Ponytail are, in their own individual ways, math-rock bands; even though both acts are as much about chaos as control.