Mutemath is a Grammy Award nominated American rock band from New Orleans that formed in 2003. Their music consists of many elements and has been described as everything from electro-alternative-rock to psychedelic-gospel to experimental-pop which give their music a futuristic flair. The group consists of Paul Meany on keyboards & vocals; Darren King on drums, samples, and programming; Greg Hill on guitar; and Roy Mitchell-Cárdenas on bass, but they often perform on any mixture or variation of these instruments.
]History
Formation
Mutemath 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 band Earthsuit. Occasionally Paul would receive instrumental demo CDs from Darren. 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 fill in as drummer for Earthsuit as the experimental Christian-rock 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, released September 2004. ]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 "Mutemath" 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 Mutemath releases. Teleprompt entered into a developmental-deal agreement with Warner Music Group in 2004, releasing Mutemath's debut Reset EP that fall. The band left Macrosick, recruited bass player Roy Mitchell-Cardenas and began 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 an increasing number of shows sell out by the Spring of 2005. By the fall of that year, they joined The Music is Much Too Loud Tour opening for Mae and Circa Survive where they chronicled their shows and updated their video blogs on a nightly basis gradually attracting more and more people to the Mutemath ground-swell. The band sold over 30,000 copies of Reset EP before the album went out of print in 2006.
Mutemath, released September 2006. The first run of the album also included a bonus live EP, Live at the El Rey. ]Mutemath
| “ | 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. | ” |
—Paul Meany - Boise Weekly - April 11, 2007 |
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 indecision on what to do with Mutemath resulting in a marketing stalemate and the threat of the whole project getting shelved. So by late 2005, Teleprompt filed suit against Warner Music requesting Mutemath to be released from their contract while Teleprompt would proceed to promote and sell Mutemath’s self-titled debut on its own.
Cover of the live DVDFlesh and Bones Electric Fun, released March 2007. 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. Mutemath landed on the covers of Billboard and Pollstar being featured in Alternative Press, Paste, and Spin as well as on the MTV News program 'You Hear It First'. The group continued to tour vigorously, playing shows to crowds of thousands at festivals such asBonnaroo, 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, Teleprompt settled litigation out of court in August 2006 with a re-negotiated contract with Warner.
WBR re-released the band's debut album Mutemath on September 26, 2006. The fully remastered album features reworked tracks from their Reset EP and a bonus limited-edition live EP. The album debuted at #17 on Billboard's Top Heatseekers chart.
The band returned to the road in early 2007 with opening dates for The Fray and 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"
Mutemath'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 and registered more than 100,000 views in less than four days. It took three weeks for Mutemath 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 Mutemath's first radio single on April 10, 2007. As of late June, the single started receiving major airplay in Modern Rock 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.
"Typical" was featured on a television commercial for the Discovery Channel, featuring clips from shows like "Man vs. Wild," "Deadliest Catch," and "Dirty Jobs.
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 BonnarooMusic 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 Book The Band vote to open for the US Virgin Festival inBaltimore, Maryland in August (Aiden won the Book The Band contest).
Mutemath'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.
The band hit the road in support of the single in September 2007 with support from 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 12, 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. On December 6, 2007, the group was nominated for a Grammy Award for their short form music video for "Typical". "Control", the second and final radio single from Mutemath 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: Mutemath Live, via iTunes on January 29, 2008. "Typical" was added as a downloadable song for the Rock Band series in early 2009.
The album cover for the single "Spotlight" released in 2009. ]Spotlight EP
In November 2008 the group released "Spotlight" on the Twilight film soundtrack album, to favorable reviews. 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. 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. The EP was also released on limited edition vinyl on March 24, 2009.
The album cover for the album Armistice released in 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. | ” |
—Paul Meany - OC Register - March 13, 2008 |
The group went to work writing and recording their second full length record in their home studio in 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.
On April 4, 2008, Goodwin Films announced they were working on a documentary film about the making of Mutemath's new record. No further details have been announced regarding the release of the film.
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 led 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.
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 Mutemath's first album which involved collaboration among all four members of the band.
The title for the sophomore record was confirmed as Armistice on May 27, 2009 in an interview on InsideBayArea.com and then confirmed on the same day on the Mutemath forums 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.
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.
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