SAN DIEGO — A local group of five CSU San Marcos English majors formed a remedial math rock band to bone up on their algebra skills, confirmed sources.
“We knew bit off more than we could chew when we all barely passed Trigonometry 101, so we formed Alpha Asphalt,” said bassist and creative writing minor Mike Singh. “Complex and unusual time signatures are a major hurdle for us. Steve Albini had a journalism degree and he crushed it in this genre so I figured we’d be OK. Turns out you have to be a goddamn ‘Good Will Hunting’ to do this shit. You think Albini ever punched ‘13/8’ into a calculator to try and make sense of it, only to get more scared and confused when ‘1.625’ popped up? Hell no, but that was my Saturday night.”
Friend of the band Kate Flores admires the musicians’ commitment and lofty goals but admits it’s been painful to watch them contend with numbers higher than four.
“It’s not easy to witness five adults angrily counting on their fingers,” Flores said. “When they practice it feels like they’re all taking a math test while somebody else yells out random numbers to mess them up, and whenever one of them goes out ‘for a smoke’ I know they’re crying. They’ve tried to hire a tutor to help improve their chops but couldn’t get anyone from Slint. At some point, they’ll probably realize that they should switch to being an advanced level indie band. We all know English majors thrive at making indie music.”
Rachel Radner, whose unlikely rise to stardom in the AP math rock band Shin Splint included no formal calculus training, believes these young musicians are not alone in their struggle.
“A lot of people think atypical structures mean playing math rock is totally freewheelin’,” said Radner. “In reality, it requires intense focus and it may not be for the faint of heart, or for most people with Emily Dickinson tattoos. It takes a lot of studying and midnight cram sessions to write an album as good as American Football. You simply can’t get good at this genre if you’re reading Shakespeare and writing essays about deconstructing post-modernism.”
At press time, the band devised a fallback option to just call it noise rock if remedial math rock doesn’t work out.