In this Focus feature, Ali Safavi explores the math rock boom that occurred across the United Kingdom and Ireland during the late 00's., and the bands that defined the time.
Elephant Gym’s star has been on the rise for a while now, (especially after the boys in the band finished their military services in 2016), both at home and internationally with our beloved Topshelf Records taking on the band last year and re-releasing their first album Angle as well as EPs Balance and the outstanding masterpiece that is Work.
Sometimes the universe just wants you to find new music. Fate, kismet, flying spaghetti monster, call it what you will but there is a force out there helping you discover the music that turns you on. And so it was with Sweden’s Dammit I’m Mad. Perhaps it was the name? Maybe the title of the Clash article proclaiming “Extra-Dimensional Pop”? (It wasn’t the masks).
As is apparently becoming tradition, a few years after a meaty Toe release we get four track EP that sounds like it could have been part of the preceding LP. A tasty little digestif to tide us from 2015’s gorgeously eclectic Hear You.
South Korea is not a hotbed of math rock bands (There’s a joke here about maths and Asians but it’s derivative) however that doesn’t mean that the country is totally void of that music we like. One such act is Tierpark who have been creating lush, dreamy, miss-your-stop music for over five years now and already have two applause-worthy albums under their belt, 2015’s The Moment Two Worlds Meet is especially deserving of your ears.
In their 14 years of existence LITE have always been good at doing something new on each release; using different instruments, adding a sprinkle of other genres one wouldn’t normally associate with them and generally keeping things fresh. Yet they always seems to maintain a mix of clean guitar twiddle and filthy funk rhythms that is theirs alone.
It feels like it’s been an age since we’ve heard from tfvsjs though it’s only been three years since the release of their first fantastic album ‘equal unequals to equal’ (kudos to the band for finally getting on that Bandcamp train, took a while!) that brought them a fair bit of attention in our global niche despite the minimal amount of information about them available online.