Caribou and the Art? Behind Math Rock
Braincookies by Xifer Fortier
I hated calculus.
I aced math through junior high and high school. Given my adolescent awareness of life’s contradictions, math was comforting. There was an answer that was correct or not. There was proof. Math helped feathered-hair, acne-pocked me understand what was happening: how tall I wasn’t, the price of beer versus the pittance of my allowance, would she ever kiss me, when, and how many times?
Two eighths made a quarter and we could split it 3 ways. We would divide it in half until the end of time eternal. A negative number had no square root — or so we were told. Until…. Calculus!!! Calculus, for those fortunate to miss it, is a way of describing an unnatural obsession with the integer i, or the square root of -1.
NEGATIVE ONE!!! I had been HAD!!! Math was ambiguous! My reliable, black and white math world was no more! Never mind that calculus was the gateway to most major science. I wasn’t having it!
I failed that class. How could I excel at something I was mad at? It wasn’t the first time I had been the victim of the ol’ bait-and-switch, and it would not be the last, but I had trusted math. When I caught it with its hand in the imaginary number jar, I took it hard.
Its all bygones now. We talk, math and I, but it isn’t like the old days. We’ve grown up, and I’ve come to appreciate math in ways I never expected I would.
Music, for example; You’ve got your beats and poly-rhythms, time signatures, and so forth. There’s even a sub-genre of rhythmically complicated music referred to as math-rock. At its best, math-rock is music played very seriously to men who are not having fun (in any classic sense), but are repeatedly nodding in a fashion that indicates they understand what is happening musically. This appears to please them a great deal. At its worst, it is as cumbersome to hear as it is to dance to.
The Independent, San Francisco 5.24.10
I spent last Sunday and Monday evenings working with Caribou at the Independent in San Francisco. Caribou is the artist name of Daniel Snaith. Much has been made in the music press about the fact that Snaith has a PhD in mathematics and has (in interviews) cited abstract math as a conceptual inspiration.
In the shadow of a psychedelic video-jam, Caribou played a 90-minute set that careened wildly from electro-dance party to noisy, epic space-rock explorations.
The sold-out crowd was an amalgam — burners, early-20′s dance-club kids, and fixed-gear bike-hipsters in full regalia. One pie-eyed gentleman was fully dressed as a leopard. By my estimate, roughly half the room was tripping balls. They were in love with this band, themselves and each other.
There was this level of abandon that is, in my experience, reserved for raves and jam-bands, which is compelling because Caribou is a jam-band for folks who grew up in a culture where the DJ is king. Go ahead and laugh. In the same way the Grateful Dead synthesized bluegrass and jazz into electrified sound-scapes for the ecstatic, Caribou borrows aesthetic cues from electro, techno and break-beat culture and jams it out so the psychedelically-inclined feel alright. Its not a ho-down with a noodley guitar-solo. It’s a remix, performed by human beings who are near you, playing instruments a few feet away.
The sum of parts is more metaphysical than mathematic; Snaith plays with our expectations, worries us, extending noisy or dissonant passages for as long he can before relieving us with a satisfying da-boom-tiss-boom, da-boom-tiss-boom, da-boom-tiss-boom, that encourages us to breathe.
Band and crowd connect. They agree on a lexicon of sonic touchstones and an arc of musical drama. It is interactive and nerd-sexy. It speaks to the cultural role of music in a way that might make DJ and hippie-rock cultures both blush.
Snaith and bassist, John Schmersal sing the word “sun” repeatedly for 5 minutes. Their voices disappear in a synthy lightening bolt. The snare drum rolls and cymbals swell. The writhing mass awaits the climactic corner where dedicated drummer, Brad Weber, and Snaith (on 2nd drum-kit), break-beating in unison, bring it to the next level. By the time they return to the “sun” chorus for another 5 minutes (5 minutes is a long time, btw), eyes are closed and arms are raised.
Smiles are downright goofy. Band and audience have discarded any concern with looking cool – They are 5 and it is Christmas. Snaith is drumming, hunched and squinty, like an accountant changing a tire in the rain (the way nerdy guys express joy). The room is a celebration.
They arrived at this place as a result of a group effort of soul and spirit, hope and faith, toil and sweat. There are enough variables to make ridiculous the question of how this formula fits neatly into an equation. In fact, it suggests Snaith has less in common with Isaac Newton than he does with Jerry Garcia.
Say what you want about Jerry. He was a guitar craftsman on a par with George Harrison, Curtis Mayfield, and Joe Pass. Jerry heard a sound that he chased for a lifetime and was fortunate to play for a devout audience that searched day in, day out for that same sound. He played on an empathy for desire typical to the human condition, to wit: We all desire a journey wherein comfort is threatened by chaos which is eventually conquered by joy itself.
Jerry was also the driving force behind the highest grossing concerts of the 90′s. Go ahead and laugh.
There are few creatures as idiotic and misdirected as the 17-year-old American male. I have no recollection of why I felt so cheated by a concept so tepid as predictability. After my breakup with math, I came to realize that a world we can count on to behave consistently isn’t just impossible. It is hopelessly over-rated and boring.
The Quadratic Equation isn’t funky. We don’t revel in the expected outcome or dance to the absolute value. We require the bravado of the incongruous. We pine for the algorithm of transcendence.
We invite the feeling of falling, that we have then been caught, and that we subsequently saved the world together. The idea that one of us, individually, arrived at a repeatable, correct answer is not only joyless. It is as imaginary as the integer i.
Read More Braincookies:
The Gay 90′s – Why Rock Radio Sucks