Posts in Math Rock
Nick Reinhart, Tera Melos

There’s nothing like a big ol’ crustacean to get you in the songwriting mood. That’s right.  If you're a songwriter and need a creative nudge, you should try seeking inspiration in a nice lobster dinner. Because that’s what Nick Reinhart of Tera Melos did. At a restaurant.  With his parents.

What’s fascinating about Reinhart is that he never lacks for inspiration. He has, in his words, “a vat of inspiration” in his head.  When he mentioned that inspiration is everywhere for him, I couldn’t help but think that he talks like a poet, who sees wonderment in the most mundane of objects. So besides his crustacean-centric creative process, he gets inspired by going to Disneyland: Reinhart has an annual pass, and every time he returns home from a visit, he can’t wait to pick up his guitar.

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Dave Davison, Maps & Atlases

Dave Davison doesn't really understand the label “math rock” that some people have given his band Maps and Atlases. Math rock the music, like mathematics the subject, after all, requires “coldness and calculation,” according to Davison. But the four members of Maps and Atlases met at Columbia College in Chicago—an art school.  Davison majored in cultural studies, Erin Elders and Chris Hainey were film majors, and Shiraz Dada majored in sound engineering. As a band, they’ve been called math rock because of their complex rhythmic structures and unconventional time signatures.  But with their debut release Perch Patchwork (Barsuk Records), they've written what critics have called a more accessible sound.  Regardless, Maps & Atlases plays some wonderfully unique and creative music.  But that's what you get when four guys from art school start a band. 

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