Tuesday, February 15, 2005

MATH

Math was the best band to come out of Chicago; They started in the late 80's and broke up in early '94. The core members were Jodie Mecanic (DUOTRON and MONOTRONA) Robert Rolston (QUINTRON) & Michael Colligan (FLYING LUTTENBACHERS). They had released a couple self-released cassettes, a split 7" on Bulb (which I had found in a thrift store), a CD entitled 'BASIC MATH' on Bulb and a self-released record 'Rubber Musique' which is the testament of their genius.

Unfortunately all of their material is out of print...except for a quirky track 'Gorilla' on 'CIA VIA UFO' comp. on Atavistic.

As Gary Stripes says, "The earlier sound of math is a very melodic and somewhat "arty" / self-consciously "weird" brand of theatrical art-pop that kind of smacks a bit too much of Tom Waits-style preciousness for my taste. Their live shows were very popular in the underground and notably featured a stage full of bizarre percussion and organ contraptions. During the heyday of the Chicago No Wave (93-94) The band accumulated more diverse influences and veered away from their merry sing-a-long style and became a more traditionally "no wave" sounding ensemble with clamourous guitars and horns."

Here, for your delight, are two tracks from 'Rubber Musique', whose track names I don't have because I foolishly lent the record to someone who soon thereafter moved away to Baltimore (Lexi...please contact me!) I encoded these tracks from an old cassette I made ten years ago, so there might be a bit of hiss. The record needle slips for a second somewhere in the middle of track 4.


MATH - Rubber Musique track 2 MP3
MATH - Rubber Musique track 4 MP3

3 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Thanks so much for posting the Math tracks. These people are brilliant. I must have listened to these two lonely tracks five times now. If you ever get ahold of that record you loaned out it'd be great if you could post the rest of it. (I'd buy a copy if I could find one.)

I did a lot of searching on the net but could only find reference to one track from Rubber Musique, "Robot." Don't know which track that would be.

1:42 AM  
Blogger Gregory Jacobsen said...

Great!

I have the whole album from cassette in my computer. I would be happy to burn you a copy. I didn't post the whole thing due to dwindling server space. e-mail me! fatty_jubbo *at* yaho o dot com.

-greg

1:57 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I don't know whether or not you'll ever catch wind of this, or already know, or whatever, but here's the tracklist for "Rubber Musique":

1. Internal Feedback
2. Robot
3. REER
4. New York/Butcher
5. Attack Attack Sequence
6. Rubber Musique

7:42 PM  

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