MATH ROCK

 When I was recovering from my sinus surgery a month ago, I spent a bit of time watching YouTube videos on the history of popular music. I enjoyed videos from SoundField on the history of blues and jazz. I would still like to watch videos on the folk revival of the 1970s, garage and riot grrl-like bands of the 1980s, and the evolution of electronic popular music in general. I watched the Soundfield video on hyperpop and it was extremely interesting! OIL ON EVERY PEARL'S UN-INSIDES sounds genuinely experimental and not just like someone was trying to be edgy.

I looked up a chart on the evolution of popular music and I saw a genre called "math rock." I listened to a playlist on Spotify and I really liked what I heard and found a flowchart on Reddit that explains what to listen to next based on what you like about other bands. Weeks passed before I realized that Foals was on this flowchart. Yeah, the weird British punk band I told everyone was like Philip Glass for rock music. That's when I learned that minimalist rock music is called Math Rock. I'm not sure what the official definition is, but I read that Math Rock experiments with unusual time signatures and prioritizes musical textures over vocals or verses. They also seem to repeat arpeggiating chords a lot, like minimalism in classical music. Thanks to this little dive, I am catching up on the albums Foals released since Antidotes and I am enjoying them effortlessly. May your research dives into new genres be just as fruitful.