Any love for math rock here? An Introduction to Math Rock: 5 Great Albums To Explore The Genre

Hey Steemit,

There isn't enough math rock on this website! Math rock is a wonderful genre - by throwing away the idea of a steady, danceable beat, bands started exploring strange combinations of rhythms, opening up whole new worlds of sound.

While math rock has come to be known for a sort of bright, tappy guitar sound with lots of technical tricks, there's really a huge variety of music in the genre. Here's a list of five albums that I think you will enjoy - a few are classics, and a few are more obscure picks for the math heads.

Hella - Hold Your Horse Is (2002)

The truest classic of the math rock world. Imagine late-period John Coltrane as a punk drummer, but keeping it ruthlessly in time, Rashied Ali cranked up to 11. It’s not just fast and loud, it’s creative as hell, the endless linearity of the drumming allowing it to weave in and around the guitar at will. This is the work of Zach Hill on his first major album, and he’s gone on to drum on over 100 records in the last 13 years or so.

Zach’s insane drumming is made palatable largely thanks to Spencer Seim’s catchy guitar parts, his style is comprised of bizarre tight-gripped guitar strumming across two or three chords per song, somehow imparting a Ramones-esque chord structure while fitting right in with the chaotic drums.

This album is incredible!! It’s surprisingly easy to enjoy, like a satisfying punk album.

Tera Melos - Drugs To The Dear Youth (2007)

This record is a symphony in three parts, split up into six tracks. One of only three official releases featuring Vince Rogers on drums, who would later go on to tour with Marnie Stern before disappearing from public life. His drumming is fluid, fast and linear in a more forgiving way than Zach Hill’s relentless pounding. He creates a beautiful foundation for Nick Reinhart’s quirky and energetic guitar melodies, he’s just got such a happy and bright sound.

These songs are DEEP. You’ll find new things to appreciate on the first, second, and three-hundredth listens. I’ll be honest, this record can be a little bit overwhelming on the first listen. It’s only twenty minutes long, so that helps. If you listen to it two or three times, you’ll start to hear how brilliant this disc is.

Colour - Anthology (2009)

The catchiest album on this list. A freakily high-pitched male singer with a knack for twisted singalong melodies leads the band of hyped up indie rockers w/ no regard for conventional song structure. It all tends towards verse/chorus in some way, but exactly how they do it evades typical pop logic.

This record is very approachable, the band itself is playing reasonably normal indie stuff with a few twists of rhythm for flavor. If you find stuff like the Hella record a little scary sounding, this might be a better spot to start.

Sholi - Sholi (2009)

A fearless and expertly performed album, Sholi's obscure status even within the world of math rock baffles me.

I just don't hear people talk about this album much. Perhaps that is due to its range, it's not an easy album to pin down. Some parts are soft, beautiful, consonant in a quiet way that most rock bands never do. When they get heavy though, the guitars push into distortion and vocals get raspy, the beauty giving way to a menacing undercurrent.

Sholi is like the indie version of Muse, maybe? They’ve got lyric themes of the powers that be watching over us, controlling our lives. The band laces together rock riffs with softer or weirder interludes that tend towards classical music. If you've heard a lot of math rock before, this album will surprise and delight you with its unique sound.

Town Portal - The Occident (2015)

Town Portal are heavy. They evoke ethereal combinations of warm upper-octave guitar lines and thick polyrhythmic bass/drums grooves. Each song feels like a laboratory experiment; you can imagine the band plucking out a few pleasing chords across a mathematically derived rhythm in some cases.

The thing is - in heavy music, that mathmaticalness isn't bad, the end result just being so satisfyingly heavy. The thickness of this kind of guitar music has always reminded me of the appeal of ridiculously bass-heavy electronic music, just that powerful floor-rumbling bass enveloping your entire being.

Hope you enjoyed the list! I hope to post more stuff like this in the near future.