Maths Class Blog

Maths Class

This name should, here and now, already mean something to you if you are even a little bit interested in the latest people emerging out of the English electro scene, such as out of this world bands like The Foals and These New Puritans. Indeed, these five young lads from Brighton, full of spirit and always up for a laugh, are part of the family of musicians that blend punk, pop and electro influences: whether you like them or not, it is hard to be indifferent to Maths Class. As seen at the last Rennes Trans Musical Festival where the five Englishmen demonstrated their brand of musical madness live.
Interview with Mike, Tim, Piers, Al and Andy before their concert at The Golden Arrow on the 31st January.
Last night you played with the French group This Is Pop. Did you have a good time?
It was excellent. We played in a really cool venue and we had a brilliant time.
You recently took part in the Rennes Trans Musical Festival. How did it go?
It was really extraordinary. It was the first time that we have played in France and it was in front of over 200 people. In the beginning we didn’t know anything about this Festival but the audience really took to us and in the end we were really pleased to have taken part. I don’t really understand why there aren’t more bands performing in the Festival.
A number of English magazines are saying that your performance is visually spectacular and that your music is punky and energetic. Do you always have such a positive re-action from the public?
Piers: In reality outside of England the public re-action is always really good and we get great reviews in general from our concerts.
Andy: But in our own country, the closer we play to home, the worse the reviews get particularly those of our neighbours!
Why do you think that is?
Andy: People think that we are strange and completely mad (he laughs).
Why do you think people re-act like that?
Andy: People think that we are really odd. They think we are total nutcases. (laughs)
Piers: In fact there are so many bands in England that the public are always waiting for the next big thing so it is really hard to stay on top. You get the feeling that people don’t come to gigs for the entertainment and just to have a good time, they are coming to analyse the performance. They stand there scrutinising you – they are not really getting into the concert. So whilst it is hard to perform in front of that kind of an audience at the same time it motivates us to perform to the very best of our abilities. In other words it really pushes us to try to surpass everything that we have done before in terms of our music and our performance.
Isn’t it precisely this that causes a certain level of competition amongst all the groups?
Piers: I don’t know, I don’t really think about that. I think that lots of bands start with an idea of the style of music that they want to play. But we never really thought about it like that, we never really decided that we wanted to play this style or that style of music or that we were going to do something different. We didn’t really know what we were going to do. It just came about naturally and it has been two years that we have been performing together and our music now isn’t the same in any way as it was in the beginning.
Tim: There isn’t really any competition between us, its just that we are a collection of bands.
Piers: Its always great to meet other bands and play with them. We always have a laugh and we are never really thinking about trying to be better than them or whatever. Either way we would never make a living if we thought like that, you can’t live your life like that.
Tim: There are some bands that we don’t like very much on the one hand then there are some bands that we really admire whose music is similar to our style of music.
What is the best thing that anyone has ever said about your music?
Andy: The worst thing? Oh no right the best thing ? (laughs) the best thing anybody has ever said is “stop that now”.
Piers: We are obviously happy when people pay us compliments about our music but the benefit to receiving criticism is that it allows us to move forwards and get better.
Tim: English magazines say good things about us, that we are the best live band in the country but when people come and see us they say “Oh my god” they seem to be expecting something in the style of Queen but I am not Freddie Mercury.
Piers: Apparently we cannot be everybody’s cup of tea – we are not everybody’s favourite live band in the whole world sadly! (laughs)
Are you working on your first album at the moment?
Piers: No but we are working on our next EP an album will be something for later.
Tim: It is hard at the moment because the music that we like is constantly evolving. When we tell ourselves that it is time to lay down some tracks it is difficult because by the time we do it we have already moved on to another style of music so it is difficult to have enough songs at the same time to do a coherent album.
Name a band that you love at the moment something that I should absolutely listen to
La Bitchhouse, Health (a noisy band from Los Angeles) a band called Metronomy, Venga Boys, Kylie Minogue, Girls Aloud oh and seriously Britney Spears as well!
Moving on, do you remember your first big musical recollection, the first music that you remember getting into?
Andy: I would love to say Radiohead but I am actually going to say Phil Collins (no really!)
Al: For me its Alanis Morissette no actually I think I will change my answer to Spice Girls but you know it was years ago!
How do you see your future? If you couldn’t make a living as musicians what would you do?
Piers: We see ourselves making music for the rest of our lives.
Andy: Kill ourselves. (laughs)
Finally, how did you meet each other?
Friends in common. Eventually our friends got fed up trailing around with us so now there is only us left!

xx

hey,

we’re shooting a video for our song Peach this week, and we need your help.

—————-

This Friday, between 10 am – 12 am

We need five girls and five guys to be in our video. It’s being done by Bench (clothing) so you will be wearing Bench outfits and can keep the clothes after the shoot.

No money sorry, but Mike will entertain you.

Location TBC, somewhere in London.

Just send us a myspace, or e-mail mathsclassband@hotmail.com

ACE.

bye

hi

Here’s an interview we did before our fleche d’or show last month.

it’s in french>>!!

www.dirrtyglam.com/fevrier

———————

ce in the past this hub has eaten iuired reding. On a tour in 2008 this occurred some way from home. We limped to a village where we fouengineer who rebuilt the hub, but could remove the cassette due  not having the correct tool. Unfortunately, the next day the same thing happened ag

amen.

——————–

a.l.

dot

xx

So we’re back from another jolly jaunt across the channel and again we’ve had such an amazing time!
Massive massive thanks to everyone who came to the shows and also to all the fantastic people we met who made our weekend so much fun.

Here are my favourite parts:

• Obligatory sight seeing
• Desperados
• Mike’s spaghetti bolomayonnaise
• Playing with This Is Pop
• Doing a show in Bozan’s dad’s workplace surrounded by ladders and stacked chairs
• Being thrown over the drumkit
• Straight vodka
• Aurelie’s neighbours
• Talking about the glory days of French football
• Mike and Al ‘bonding’ under a zebra print duvet
• Sweet meal at the fleche d’or
• First show in Paris
• Finding the noise on the metro absolutely hilarious
• The 45 minute walk to Sabine’s flat for a party
• Hanging out at Joris’ apartment
• Mike forcefully befriending Matthew from Reuters

We certainly didn’t make any friends on the Eurostar on the way home as a couple of us, mentioning no names (Mike and Andy), hadn’t had any sleep and decided to drink a bottle of Jack Daniels before and during the train journey.

A combination of very choice language mixed with a very loud volume meant the calling of the train manager and threats of being thrown off the train at Calais.

Luckily we all made it back to England in one piece and hopefully we’ll be allowed back sometime soon!

Thanks again to all that came.

Big love

Tim