Mute Math
(sometimes typeset as MUTEMATH
or MuteMath
) is a Grammy Award nominated American rock band from New Orleans that formed in 2003. Their music consists of many elements such as alternative rock, new wave, electro rock, psychedelic rock, and post-rock with ambient vocals. The group consists of Paul Meany on Rhodes piano, bass, keytar, keyboards, samples, vocals, and more recently, guitar; Darren King on drums, samples, and programming; Greg Hill on guitar, piano, vocals, and sometimes using his floor pedals as an instrument; and Roy Mitchell-Cárdenas on bass guitar, upright bass, and bass drum.
|
MUTEMATH TICKETS
|
History
Formation
Mute Math started in 2001 as a long distance collaboration between Paul Meany in
New Orleans, Louisiana and Darren King in
Springfield, Missouri. The two had known each other from their work together in Meany's previous Christian group
Earthsuit. Occasionally Paul would receive instrumental demo CDs from Darren King. Fairly impressed with his efforts, Paul contacted Darren and asked if he could mess with the demos a bit, adding some ideas of his own. Darren obliged and the two would set in motion a sort of songwriting ping-pong match that would carry on for several months until Darren was asked to return and replace yet another drummer for Earthsuit as the band began to quickly dissolve. After Earthsuit finally disbanded, King moved to New Orleans and began to talk of a possible collaboration with Meany. The two worked on demos and played a handful of shows under the moniker "MATH".
With the recruiting of guitarist Greg Hill, the trio worked in their New Orleans home studio writing and recording a whole new collection of songs. Paul immediately played the demos for longtime friend and producer
Tedd T, who fell in love at first listen. The trio continued to work on demos with Tedd T for a possible EP while playing shows with another Earthsuit member in Adam LaClave's art-rock group
MACROSICK.
Reset EP
After months of considering different options for their new venture, the group decided to do things on their own and officially changed their name to "Mute Math" after discovering that "MATH" was already being used by another group. Meany recruited
Tedd T and lawyer and former Earthsuit manager Kevin Kookogey to form
Teleprompt Records as a way to independently control Mute Math releases. Teleprompt entered into an agreement with Warner Music Group in 2004, releasing Mute Math's debut
Reset EP
that fall. The band left MACROSICK to begin touring to promote the release, using popular social networking sites like
MySpace to spread word of the group. As their fan base grew, it began to see its shows sell out in
Los Angeles,
New York,
Nashville,
Houston,
Dallas, and
Phoenix. They chronicled their shows and updated their video blogs on a nightly basis and finally recruited permanent bass player Roy Mitchell-Cárdenas, another Earthsuit member, in the winter of 2004. The band sold over 30,000 copies of
Reset EP
before the album went out of print in 2006.
Mute Math
“
| For us, we just try to keep it simple. We're obviously a band; that's really all we ever wanted to be from the very beginning without catering to any particular genre or political or religious agenda. We just want to make music with no barriers.
| ”
|
In January 2006, the band set out on a tour in support of their self-titled debut album. It was independently released in response to
Warner Music Group's decision to distribute and promote Mute Math primarily to Christian retailers through its Christian label
Word Records, a breach of the contract that was forged with Teleprompt preceding the release of Reset EP. (see
Teleprompt Controversy for more details).
The special edition of the album was only available as a "tour-only" release until it hit the Internet on Teleprompt's online store, selling more than 10,000 copies in its first month. Mute Math landed on the covers of
Billboard
and
Pollstar [1] being featured in
Alternative Press [2],
Paste [3], and
Spin [4] as well as on the
MTV News program 'You Hear It First'
[5]. The group continued to tour vigorously, playing shows to crowds of thousands at festivals such as
Bonnaroo,
Lollapalooza,
Van's Warped Tour,
V Festival,
CMJ Music Marathon in
New York City, and Voodoo Music Experience in their hometown of
New Orleans.
After months of legal wrangling with parent label
Warner Bros. Records regarding marketing and representation, Teleprompt settled litigation out of court in August 2006 with a re-negotiated contract with Warner.
WBR re-released the band's debut album
Mute Math
on
September 26,
2006. The fully remastered album features reworked tracks from their Reset EP
[6] and a bonus limited-edition live EP. The album debuted at #17 on Billboard's
Top Heatseekers chart.
[7]
The band returned to the road in early 2007 with opening dates for
The Fray,
Wolfmother in various cities and a brief headlining tour in Europe.
Flesh And Bones Electric Fun, an exclusive live DVD was released on March 20, 2007 with an accompanying 43-city North American tour that ran through the first of May.
The band also received some unexpected publicity on
American Idol
when contestant
Chris Sligh sang "
Typical" on the show's Top 24 episode.
"Typical"
Mute Math's first music video, for "
Typical", premiered on
YouTube on
March 21,
2007. The video was directed by Israel Anthem and features the band performing the song backwards. The video made it on the
New York Post
Hot List
[8] and registered more than 100,000 views in less than four days
[9]. It took three weeks for Mute Math to learn their parts backwards. When asked whether singing backwards or drumming backwards was more difficult, Paul Meany answered, "Darren had it the hardest."
"Typical" was also released as Mute Math's first radio single on
April 10,
2007. As of late June, the single started receiving major airplay in Modern Rock and is quickly rising up the
Mediabase Alternative chart jumping from #115 to #65 and was also the second most added song on Alternative stations the week of
June 13,
2007. The single then jumped to #36 the first week of August 2007, a position it held for six weeks before it moved to a peak position to #35.
[10]
"Typical" was featured on a television commercial for the Discovery Channel, featuring clips from shows like "Man vs. Wild," "Deadliest Catch," and "Dirty Jobs.
[11]
The group made limited appearances at various summer festivals in mid-2007 in order to work on writing and recording material for their forthcoming sophomore record. The band's debut performance at the
Bonnaroo Music Festival coincided with their second appearance on
The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson
.
The group appeared on
Transformers: The Album
, released on
July 3,
2007, performing the "Transformers Theme" in conjunction with the
live-action film directed by
Michael Bay (although the song did not appear in the film) and made a television appearance on
The Late Show with David Letterman
on July 17. The group was in the running for
MTV2 and
Virgin Mobile's vote to open for the US
Virgin Festival in
Baltimore, Maryland in August (
Aiden won the Book The Band contest).
Mute Math's
debut album reappeared on Billboard's
Top Heatseekers Chart on
August 4,
2007 at #28, while the single "
Typical" debuted at #39 on Billboard's
US Modern Rock Chart the same week.
[12]
The band hit the road in support of the single in September 2007 with support
Eisley, which included two television appearances. The first was
September 19, their second appearance on
Jimmy Kimmel Live. The show aired a taped performance of the band recreating the video the single "
Typical" that was taped in front of the studio audience and then played back in reverse for the broadcast. Their second television appearance was their debut on
NBC's
Late Night with Conan O'Brien performing "Break the Same" for the first time on television on
October 17.
On November 12th, 2007
Atlantic Records announced that the band would join
Alanis Morissette on
Matchbox Twenty's Exile In America Tour which kicked off in Hollywood, FL on January 25, 2008 and ran through mid-March.
[13] On December 6, 2007, the group was nominated for a
Grammy Award for their short form music video for "Typical".
[14] "
Control", the second and final radio single from
Mute Math
was released January 15, 2008. The music video for the single was filmed in Nashville in January, but its distribution was halted due to copyright issues in regards to a previously released clip from a European group. The band also released the companion album to their 2007 live dvd,
Flesh And Bones Electric Fun: Mute Math Live
, via iTunes on January 29, 2008. "Typical" was added as a
downloadable song for the
Rock Band series in early 2009.
Spotlight EP
The group released "
Spotlight" on the motion picture soundtrack for the movie
Twilight in November 2008 to favorable reviews.
[15] [16] [17] The song was the first single from
Armistice
and was released digitally February 10, 2009 on
Spotlight EP
which included
B side tracks and a remix of the song by Son Lux. The single reached #1 on the Billboard Hot Singles chart the week of
February 28,
2008 and kept the spot for two consecutive weeks. The single dipped to #10 before making its last appearance on the chart at #3 the week of
April 11,
2009.
[18] The group performed "Spotlight" for the first time on The Tonight Show on January 15, 2009, featuring guest appearances from LaClave and Allen from
Club of the Sons and Jeremy Larson, all of whom have worked on the upcoming album.
[19] The EP was also released on limited edition vinyl on March 24, 2009.
Armistice
“
| Our goal is to embarrass the first record, that's what we're trying to do here, and I think we're on point to pull it off.
| ”
|
The group completed the writing and recording of their second full length record in their home studios in Nashville and New Orleans. The album, entitled
Armistice
, was released in the United States on Teleprompt Records/Warner Bros. Records on
August 18,
2009.
During the recording of the album, short videos have been posted to the band's
Youtube profile. These videos document the work going on in the studio, including street interviews where New Orleans locals are shown samples of the album (which cannot be heard in the video), recording their reactions. Any clips of actual music from the new album is presented in such a way that it only hints at what the album will eventually sound like.
[21]
On April 4, 2008, Goodwin Films announced they were working on a documentary film about the making of Mute Math's new record. No further details have been announced regarding the release of the film.
[22]
On August 2, 2008, in an interview with
The Morning Call, Meany spoke about the new record. "We want to keep it in the oven and make sure things are ready to go," says Meany." Anyone who thinks first album is perfect will hate this [new] record. If you heard the first record and liked some stuff about it [but] think things could improve, you may like it. It's important for us to change up the formula. We thought we were writing [the new album] for the last 2½ years on the road, but found out we weren't. We just started three months ago."
[23] The band later went in to detail about this same subject in an updated biography. According to the biography, the group had almost called it quits during the writing of the album. The band had written about 16 songs in the 3 years spent on the road touring and had expected to cut the list to 10 after settling down to record in their New Orleans home studio. Weeks of working with old ideas and bickering between the band mates lead the group to begin searching for an outside producer to help focus the group and stabilize the tension. During this search, the group met producer
Dennis Herring and after hearing his input, decided to scrap all the previously written material and start from scratch, bringing Herring on board as producer of the album. The band worked over the next three months writing almost 20 new songs that would shape
Armistice
. The band then spent time at Herring's studio in
Oxford,
Mississippi recording the final touches of the album.
[24]
On January 14, 2009, King said in an interview that after a break for the holidays, they would "get back to recording in hopes of having everything done in March so that the album can come out in August. It has taken way longer than we would have ever imagined but we’re just not done with it yet." Additionally, he mentioned that the album was Mute Math's first album which involved collaboration among all four members of the band.
[25]
The title for the sophomore record was confirmed as
Armistice
on May 27th, 2009 in an interview on InsideBayArea.com and then confirmed on the same day on the Mute Math forums
[26] [27] Teleprompt Records and Warner Bros. Records made a joint press release on
June 9,
2009 announcing the details of the album release including the name
Armistice
, album cover, and track listing, as well as the official US release date of August 18.
[28]
Armistice
debuted at no. 18 on the
Billboard 200, with over 18,000 units sold in the first week. The album also charted at no. 4 on Billboard Rock charts and no. 3 on the Billboard Digital Albums and Billboard Alternative Albums charts the same week.
Discography
EPs and albums
- Reset EP
- 2004 - Teleprompt/WEA
- Mute Math
- 2006 - Teleprompt/WBR
- Live at the El Rey EP
- 2006 - Teleprompt/WBR
- Flesh And Bones Electric Fun: Mute Math Live
- 2008 - Teleprompt/WBR
- Spotlight EP
Teleprompt/WBR, 2009
- Armistice
- August 18th, 2009 - Teleprompt/WBR
|
Singles
- "Typical" (Teleprompt/WBR, 2007)
- "Control" (Teleprompt/WBR, 2008)
- "Spotlight" (Teleprompt/WBR, 2009)
- "Backfire" (Teleprompt/WBR, 2009)
|
Compilations
- "Chaos" Aware 11
-Aware Records
- "Transformers Theme" Transformers: The Album
- Warner Bros. Records
- "You Are Mine" appeared in the 2008 movies "Never Back Down" and "The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2".
- "Spotlight (Twilight Mix)" - Twilight Soundtrack
Charts
Albums
Year
| Album
| Chart positions
|
Billboard Heatseekers [29]
| Billboard 200
|
2004
| Reset EP
| -
| -
|
2006
| Mute Math
| 17
| -
|
2009
| Armistice
| -
| 18
|
Singles
Year
| Title
| Album
| Chart positions
|
US Alternative [30]
| US Modern Rock [31]
| Hot Video Clip Tracks [32]
| Bubbling Under Hot 100 Singles [33]
| Hot Christian Songs [34]
| Hot Adult Christian Contemporary [35]
| Hot Singles Sales [36]
|
2004
| "Control"* [37]
| Reset EP
| -
| -
| -
| -
| -
| -
| -
|
2005
| "Peculiar People"*
| Reset EP
| -
| -
| -
| -
| 32
| 35
| -
|
2007
| "Typical"
| Mute Math
| 34
| 33
| 7
| -
| -
| -
| -
|
2007
| "Transformers Theme"
| Transformers: The Album
| -
| -
| -
| 20
| -
| -
| -
|
2008
| "Control"
| Mute Math
| -
| -
| -
| -
| -
| -
| -
|
2009
| "Spotlight"
| Spotlight EP
| -
| -
| -
| -
| -
| -
| 1
|
NOTE: "Control" and "Peculiar People" appeared on CCR formats and charted for a short time before they were pulled from the CCM market.
Awards and nominations
Awards
- Dove Award 2005 Best Modern Rock Song - "Control". [38]
Nominations
- Grammy Award 2008 Best Short Form Music Video- "Typical".
Filmography
- Flesh And Bones Electric Fun
(Teleprompt/WBR, 2007) — DVD Release
- Upcoming Documentary
(Teleprompt/WBR/Goodwin Films, 2009) — Release details TBA
Tours
- Fall 2004 - The Illuminate Tour with the David Crowder*Band and Shawn McDonald
- Spring 2005 - SXSW & The Reset Tour with Mat Kearney
- Summer 2005 - Cornerstone Festival
- Fall 2005 - The Music Is Much Too Loud Tour with Mae and Circa Survive
- Winter 2005 - The Album Release Tour with Vedera
- Spring 2006 - The Album Release Tour (Second Leg) with The Working Title
- May 2006 - The Album Release Encore Tour featuring Under The Influence of Giants, Lovedrug, and other guests
- Summer 2006 - Bonnaroo, Lollapalooza, Vans Warped Tour, V Festival
- Fall 2006 - Fall Tour with Shiny Toy Guns, The Whigs, Jonezetta, and Club Of The Sons [39]
- Fall 2006 - Voodoo Music Experience & CMJ Music Marathon
- January 2007 - Winter College Tour opening for The Fray
- February 2007 - Headlining European Tour
- Spring 2007 - SXSW & Flesh And Bones Electric Fun Tour with The Cinematics, Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin, Club Of The Sons, and one show with Wolfmother
- June 2007 - Headlining European Tour
- Summer 2007 - Street Scene, Bluesfest, Bonnaroo, Virgin Festival (Toronto & Vancouver) & Reading Festival (United Kingdom)
- Fall 2007 - Headlining Tour with Eisley, Pilot Speed, Voodoo Music Experience & CMJ Music Marathon
- Winter 2007 / Early 2008 - Exile In America Tour with Matchbox Twenty and Alanis Morissette
- Summer 2008 - Download 2008 in the US & Summer Sonic 2008 in Japan.
- Winter 2008 / Early 2009 - Eaglepalooza (Hattiesburg, MS/University of Southern Mississippi)
- Summer 2009 - Summer Sonic 2009 in Japan and Virgin Festival.
- Fall 2009 - Armistice Tour with As Tall As Lions, Voodoo Music Experience, and Austin City Limits Festival 2009
Television appearances
- February 3, 2006 - CBS -
The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson
- *Notes: Television debut. Performed "Chaos".
- September 19, 2006 - MTV News -
You Hear It First''
'''
- November 9, 2006 - MTV Canada -
MTV Live
- *Notes: Live show was only broadcast in Canada.
- December 1, 2006 - ABC -
Jimmy Kimmel Live
- *Notes: Performed "Typical" and "Chaos". Paul snaps the neck of the red keytar later featured in the music video for "Typical". [40] [41]
- June 14, 2007 - CBS -
The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson
- *''Notes: Performed "Typical". (2nd appearance)
''
- July 2007 - MTV -
Discover and Download''
'''
- July 17, 2007 - CBS -
The Late Show with David Letterman
- *''Notes: Performed "Typical".
''
- September 18, 2007 - ABC -
Jimmy Kimmel Live
- *Notes: Live "backwards" performance of "Typical". (2nd appearance)
- October 17, 2007 - NBC -
Late Night with Conan O'Brien'''
- *''Notes: Performed "Break The Same".
- January 15, 2009 - NBC -
The Tonight Show with Jay Leno'''
- *Notes: Performed "Spotlight"
- August 27, 2009 - CBS -
The Late Show with David Letterman
- *''Notes: Performed "Backfire" (2nd appearance)
References
- Pollstar HotStar: Mute Math
- 100 Bands to Watch in 2007
- 4 To Watch For
- Mute Math: Artist Of The Day
- You Hear It First: Mute Math
- See Differences in new Mute Math album for details.
- Mute Math Chart History
- "HOT LIST"
- "Typical"
- Mediabase Alternative Charts
- {{cite web|url="http://commercials.tuneforums.com/thread_view.php?threadID=2295
- Billboard Chart History
- Exile In America Press Release
- 50th Annual Grammy Award Nominees
- Twilight OST Review
- Twilight
- Twilight Original Motion Picture Soundtrack Review
- Billboard Chart History
- New Mute Math song on "Twilight" Soundtrack
- Mute Math gives concert-goers a reason to arrive early
- Mute Math's Youtube profile
- Shooting Mute Math in Nashville
- Buzz grows louder for Mute Math
- MUTEMATH Biography
- Exclusive Mute Math and Jeremy Larson Interview
- New Orleans rock band MuteMath finally jelling
- Album Title Released!
- MUTEMATH PREPARE TO LAUNCH “ARMISTICE” ON AUGUST 18, 2009
- Mute Math Chart History
- Mediabase Alternative Charts
- Billboard Chart History
- Billboard Chart History
- Billboard Chart History
- Billboard Chart History
- Billboard Chart History
- Billboard Chart History
- Dove Award Recipients for Modern Rock Recorded Song of the Year
- GMA 2005 Press Release
- Review of Mute Math show
- It Takes A Secure Man To Destroy A Stage With A Keytar
- Mute Math performs "Typical" on Jimmy Kimmel Live