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"math" rock bassists
- Thread starter vade700
- Start date
Hey, I was at that show! I think... Or wait, no, maybe I saw them at some divey warehouse-like club in Brooklyn? Now I can't remember.
I'm a huge Don Cab fan -- although admittedly I've only heard their first four albums (I bought Punkgasm on Amazon a year or two ago and still haven't opened the shrinkwrap!). The only other math-rock band I'm familiar with is Battles, but I definitely like everything I've heard from them.
But between DonCab and Battles, I find myself presented with an interesting conundrum: It's one of the only genres I can think of where I genuinely enjoy listening to the music, but have absolutely zero interest in playing that sort of stuff with a band.
...which, for me, seems like a legit enough way to differentiate "math-rock" from "prog-rock" 'cuz I'll usually jump at any opportunity to get my inner Chris Squire on and prance about the stage playing prog.
Math rock is a term that is used for rock that makes heavy use of odd meters and strange rhythmic patterns, often with several shifts in tempos and meters used within the same song and usually using untraditional song structures incorporating many different sections, not following the common A-B-A-B-C-A-B form.
Often the change of meters used is arranged in a way that gives a more abrasive or chaotic feel of flow, like you are being tossed around listening to it, than for example is usually the case with progressive rock.
Otherwise it has a fair lot in common with progressive rock, just usually with less emphasis on melody and epic symphonic compositions, and more emphasis on rhythm and rocking hard.
I have played bass in a math rock band in the past, where I learned a whole lot about playing odd meters.
Something I still make heavy use of when writing my own stuff.
I don't even have to think about it anymore, a lot of the stuff just comes out that way naturally.
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RIGHT ON! I still remember the first time I saw Dazzling Killmen. Absolutely blew my mind. The bass part on the last verse of Agitator off of Face of Collapse is possibly the coolest thing I’ve ever heard played.
Based on my (as noted above) limited exposure to math rock bands, the thing that differentiates it from prog rock to my ear is that math rock seems to have evolved from post-punk indie rock, with a slight nod towards Minimalism (Riley, Reich, and Glass), whereas prog rock evolved from psychedelia (in its early years) and more corporate hard rock/metal styles (in recent years) with a slight nod towards "Maximalism" (aka the more bombastic and angular 20th Century symphonic composers such as Holst, Stravinsky, and Bartok).
Quite accurate and a more explicit description of the difference between math and progressive rock than I managed to write, though as math rock has evolved and has begun to interact with other genres in some cases it can now be found in a form that is harder to distinguish from progressive rock, taking a more symphonic, or maximalstic as you say, approach to composing.
For instance this (The opening track could probably without trouble fit into straight progressive rock, but it gets more apparent what I am talking about on the 3 other tracks of this EP):
Is it math rock with prog rock elements or is it prog rock with math rock elements?
In the end it is always a bit weird to categorize music into genres, as genres are constructs created with the purpose of putting music into a definition system and music often is not created with the purpose of fitting into a specific genre definition.
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