Math Rock Math Dump - Music

I've been on a real math-rock kick lately, and have been finding a bunch of good bands (via bandcamp of course)

here's my current list


Town Portal has a new cd out called Chronopoly . Town Portal is a fairly well known band for math rock enthusiasts (mathies? mathheads? ...calculators?).

Suffer Like G Did has some great tunes as well, and their album covers are just so pleasing.

Maps & Atlases is another pretty well known math band, i don't think they've put an album out in a while, at least not on their bandcamp, but their You Me and the Mountain EP is pretty great.

Ghost Cat is fairly harsh for math-rock, more of a mathcore i guess if you wanna get all technical about it. The singers voice reminds me of La Dispute's singer, if their music was more mathy and less horrifyingly sad (i.e. I See Everything off of their new cd Wildlife)

Dios Trio is a really low-key math band, really good for relaxing, especially their cd High On Bikes.

Enemies is one of my favorite mathrock bands, they are another great relaxing band, i'm a huge fan of We've Been Talking

Lecture - Jean Shin

I enjoyed Jean Shin's work, most of it, and i like hearing about the creative process behind her art. I learned a lot about being a professional artist from her, like the fact that she has interns. It never really occurred to me that an artist would have multiple assistants to help with their projects, but it makes a lot of sense. I liked Jean Shin's pill bottle chandeliers the best i think, and i really didn't care for the trophies or the clothing walls.

Also i felt like she got off topic a lot during the q&a, not that i didn't like hearing about her craft, but i mean, the woman can talk...

Play the Leaf

MTV and BOOOOOOOM! were having a contest, for people to play music with instruments made of things that weren't instruments. This submission is my favorite, i just can't figure out how to embed videos in blogger so i guess i'll just put the link in?

I wish i was a video

Ryan Andrews - Illustration

Sarah and the Seed

I have had this comic saved in my bookmarks for awhile, i love the art style, and the whole story. The artist has other works as well, i enjoy all of them, Bloodstained roof has some great images in it.


Other Comics

Alex Roulette - Artist

I also found Alex Roulette the other day. I really enjoy his eerie nature paintings, his choice of colors makes all his paintings seem sinister.

Mark Nystrom - Artist

I found Mark Nystrom last week while i was looking through art websites. I really like his Wind Drawings collection. To create his pieces
" I cut some plastic bottles into different shapes and tied each one to a stick in the snow. Left all day to blow in the wind, the plastic cut into the snow making a record of the day’s wind conditions. 

Wanting a more permanent record, I constructed an apparatus to suspend a pen outfitted with sails over paper. Each drawing here is a record of one day's wind conditions."

ARTIST RESEARCH - Vojislav Jakic - Works on Paper

I couldn't find much info on Vojislav Jakic, just that he is Serbian and created large, large drawings. He drew from his life, and obsession with death and that he mixes abstraction into his works, and used ballpoint pens.

I envy people that can create large-scale works with ordinary writing tools like ball-point pens or sharpies, micron pens even. Jakic's work reminds me of the first artist i posted on my blog Don Kenn. If Kenn's works were more, patterned or layered they would be a very close style.

ARTIST RESEARCH - Andy Goldsworthy - Sculpture/Mixed Media/Installation

Andy Goldsworthy is an installation/mixed media artist who focuses in nature. He uses pieces of nature to sculpt large-scale monuments, often within nature itself. He is considered the father of Rock Balancing, which  i'm sure you've seen on beaches. His work is very spherical, or at least rounded, and he tends not to edit his materials. He works with what he finds, which i'm sure must become tedious, looking for that one perfectly cut leaf in a forest.

Goldsworthy could also be considered a photography artist, due to the important role the photographing of his works plays in their mood. The way the piece is placed, in the foreground, the background, off to the side, determines a lot of how it will be perceived.

Doing this artist actually reminded me that when i was in probably the 7th grade, my mom made us go down to this tiny theatre in Seattle and watch this documentary about a man who painted with rocks on other rocks in streams, and balanced rocks on one another, i didn't realize it til now that it was Andy Goldsworthy!

Untitled
Reconstructed Icicles
Red Leaf Patch

ARTIST RESEARCH - Yves Klein - Performance

Yves Klein is a very interesting artist. He had a series of painting works, called the Monochromes, as well as a Blue Epoch. It seems blue was his favorite thing to paint with, he was hired to paint murals in a German opera house, using only blue. He also once held a gallery called "The Void" where he removed everything from his room, placed a single cabinet, painted white, in the corner of the room and stated "My paintings are now invisible and I would like to show them in a clear and positive manner." 

He then began working on Performance art, most notably his piece Saut dans le vide (Leap into the Void). It depicts him leaping from atop a wall, onto the pavement below. It is an iconic piece, and the first thing i think of when i hear Performance Art.

  Saut dans le vide (Leap into the Void)

 Great Blue Cannibalism


Yves Klein is obviously an influential artist to the movements of Abstraction and Performance art. He has one of the most iconic pieces of Performance art, and his style of painting only in blue (for a period) is something typical of great artists (picasso's blue period)

ARTIST RESEARCH - Wynn Bullock - Photography

Wynn Bullock is a 20th century photographer, born 1902 and living until the mid 70's. He worked mainly with black and white photographs, doing one collection in color called Color Light Abstractions. His work is based mostly in nature, there are very organic shapes in his pieces. Few have people in them, and when they do the person is often not the focus of the piece.

Erosion 1959

Woman and Dog in Forest 1953

 Child in Forest 1951


i really enjoy Bullock's work. I think his pieces are refreshing, so many nature photographs focus on some sort of message about preserving the rainforest, or recycling, which might just be related to the time period we live in. But in Bullock's work he uses nature as a canvas, or as a painter would use a color, it's more of just another tool he can use than a message.

ARTIST RESEARCH - Robert Rauschenberg - Painting/Drawing

Robert Rauschenberg is a painter who focuses on the abstract in everyday life. He "rejects the angst of the abstract expressionism" and focuses more on an almost installation style, using non-artistic objects to create his paintings.

He also had a series of works done in the Pop-art period done with magazine clippings, used to screen print. He would overlap the prints with paint to give the illusion of abstraction from far away.


Signs 1970
 Express (1990 ^)

these two pieces demonstrate his pop-art influences and his focus on abstract expression
Signs, shows important historical events of the 60's (moon landing, martin luther king jr's death, vetnam war etc.) and Express shows above all else, movement.


I enjoy Rauschenberg's works, i think that they are extremely well crafted, and it amazes me that he has stayed relevant for someone with such a long career. I believe he was making art up until his death in 2008.