Bubblemath - Prog You Don't See Coming

Three albums in twenty years: Minneapolis' Bubblemath can hardly be called workaholics when it comes to releasing records. Nonetheless, they're among the most original and surprising voices in contemporary progressive rock, with a style that pairs avant-prog intricacy with an incurable melodic drive.

Always devoted to an imagery steeped in science, they'd chosen the title of their first self-produced album, "Such Fine Particles Of The Universe", so that it could be spelled out using abbreviations of elements from the periodic table. Their second record, released through the world's leading avant-prog label, Cuneiform Records, bears a palindromic title that nods to chemistry and biotechnology. On the occasion of the release of their brand new "Turf Ascension", keyboardist and lyricist Kai Esbensen answered a few questions.

First of all: your name. I find that "Bubblemath" reflects your music perfectly, but... where does it come from? And what's the origin of the title of the new album, "Turf Ascension"? No palindromes or chemistry wordplay this time?

The name "Bubblemath" is a nod to the branch of physics that studies the mathematics of surface tension and separation interfaces, as well as the forces that govern them. When I came up with the name back in 1995, the World Wide Web was still brand new, and there was nothing yet resembling search engine optimization; I thought it was important for a band to have a name unique enough that, if someone searched for it online, they'd only find pages actually connected to the band's name. On top of that, I wanted a name strange enough to stand out on a hypothetical bill alongside other bands. "Bubblemath" was perfect! I also think it captures a lot of the music we make - "math" obviously reflects our tendency toward intricate, time-signature-driven compositions; "bubble", on the other hand, speaks to the very melodic, pop sensibility that runs through everything, so geared toward sequences that are as odd as they are cute and catchy. And speaking of surface tension, the title "Turf Ascension" is a spoonerism (a swap of syllables, ed.) on the pronunciation of the album's opening track, "Surface Tension". A few years ago, during a rehearsal, we were about to play that song and our guitarist Blake Albinson called it "Turf Ascension" instead of "Surface Tension", and it cracked us up. I thought it could be a great album title, because all the songs deal in one way or another with "ascending" from some kind of "turf"; in some cases literally, in others figuratively, and in a few cases both ways! So it fit perfectly.

Since your very first album, your music has struck me for its eccentric, mind-bending character. Is that a feeling you actively pursue, or is this "headache-inducing" element (which, surprisingly, never undermines catchiness!) simply a means of expressing other feelings?

It's certainly true that Bubblemath's music falls into the "cerebral" or "complicated" category, but we don't really tend to think of it that way. The best way to explain it is that we try to write music that engages us while we're playing it, and that we enjoy when we listen back to it. I'm afraid we have pretty short attention spans. But ultimately what we want is simply to make music that's fun and interesting. The result is the Bubblemath sound. We hope not too many people end up with headaches from it!

This album contains the longest track you've ever released, and the others all hover around the ten-minute mark too... Your first album, by contrast, was made up of short songs, while the second was roughly a middle ground. Listening to your latest release, I find your music has grown richer in nuance and more gradual in its progressions, at least compared to the constant about-turns that filled your shorter pieces. What pushed you to explore this, let's say, more "patient" direction?

I think it has to do with our need to challenge ourselves to stay engaged and entertained, musically speaking, without falling back on our well-worn habits. In the past, and especially on the first record, we'd shift gears and jump from one mood to another constantly to keep things interesting for ourselves. There's nothing wrong with that, of course, but I think we ended up missing the chance to develop certain themes and let them evolve. Flipping everything on its head and changing direction abruptly comes easily to us, but the challenge is: "how do we keep things interesting without always relying on rapid-fire mood changes?" That challenge is interesting in itself. It's a challenge on top of a challenge! Plus, it's nice to discover where these themes take us when we give them room to evolve at their own pace.

One thing I really appreciate, which sets you apart from a lot of other progressive bands past and present, is your attention to timbre. Whether it's the keyboard parts or the guitar parts, I often find myself wondering "where on earth does this sound come from?". How do you choose and design the sound of your instruments?

Oh, thanks for pointing that out, I'm really glad you noticed! I always build my synth sounds from scratch, because I want to make sure everything sounds as fresh as possible. I also often blend different synths together, so that even when the music is heard by synthesizer experts, it's not easy to pin down this or that model of instrument. It keeps the listener on their toes. As for the guitar parts, Blake Albinson and Jon Smith put a lot of care into shaping their sound with amps and effects. Often these custom-tailored guitar and keyboard timbres intertwine in a way that makes it hard to tell which instrument is playing which line. Obviously, though, you can still hear each line distinctly, because we make sure the mixing of the records allows every individual part to come through clearly. But taken as a whole, the sounds aren't instantly identifiable.

When I listen to your music, I hear elements that remind me of a lot of different bands: Gentle Giant, Genesis, Cardiacs (yes, I know these last two weren't direct influences on your sound!), even Rage Against The Machine and Dream Theater! But you never actually sound like any of them. What are the main experiences that have shaped your approach to music? I don't just mean artists, but also things you've done, or events in your life as a band...

We all have significantly different backgrounds when it comes to the music that inspired us, the music we grew up with. Each of us has favorites the others don't like. So there's a lot of different, often incompatible stuff that each of us enjoys. But at the same time, we tend to be dissatisfied by the same things: predictable chord changes, lyrical clichés, and so on. We might not always agree on what we like, but more often than not we agree on what doesn't work for us. In the end, that's what binds us together, and what drives us to create Bubblemath's music together. We always strive to create music that we find interesting in a fun way, and that's mainly what inspires us when we write new tracks. Again: we're very much driven by our desire to avoid getting bored, so we always try to consider new approaches to things.

How do your compositions come about? Do you write them out, do they emerge during rehearsals, from a single author, with a Digital Audio Workstation?

For our first album, a lot of the music was written by one or two of us; then we'd bring it to rehearsal and teach it to the other members. The songs obviously developed collaboratively, but their starting point usually didn't come from the band as a whole. For "Edit Peptide", that mechanism was still partly in place, but we all allowed ourselves to contribute more to each other's songs with our own ideas. On top of that, a lot of music developed from seeing how the band played together and from trying to shake things up a bit. For "Turf Ascension", the songs emerged in a very collaborative way - that's why we credited all the music to Bubblemath as a whole this time, rather than to individual writers. And honestly, I wish we'd done it that way from the start. Because even if I write an entire song by myself, and then teach it to the band explaining what to play, it's ultimately the way the band plays the piece and the decisions each person makes that determine the final product that gets recorded, and that's what makes the band what it is. So I think it really makes sense to credit everyone in the music's credits.

Your songs really have a ton of words for a prog band. How closely tied to the musical component do you feel they are?

In a lot of songs you hear from other bands, the lyrics feel like an afterthought, almost a last-minute patch job. As if, once the music was written, the band just said to themselves: "Eh, let's throw in whatever, who cares anyway!" Well, I care! And that's always given me pause, especially when I really love the music itself — I feel super let down if the quality of the words doesn't match the quality of the music. So I wanted to make sure that wouldn't happen with Bubblemath. My goal in writing lyrics is for those words to deserve music like Bubblemath's. Whether or not I succeed in that goal is obviously up to the listener's point of view. But as far as my own opinion goes, the lyrics on "Turf Ascension" hit the mark.

Your first record, "Such Fine Particles Of The Universe", came out twenty years ago. How has the prog world changed in all that time?

I think there's a lot more tolerance these days — I'd even say "acceptance" — for progressive rock, compared to twenty years ago. And when I say "progressive rock" I mean it in the most literal sense of the word "progressive": not a rehash of Seventies music, but music that finds its own way to explore boundaries and challenge people's expectations in a modern way. I think that, with the convenience of home recording and the sheer volume of music coming out at any given moment, it's become easier than ever to find genuinely interesting stuff, and I get the impression there are more people ready and willing to get excited about this kind of music. More than at any other point in the past, honestly. Obviously the music world in general has also changed enormously, and unfortunately recorded music is basically worthless in monetary terms these days. Streaming has killed physical sales and has pretty much killed off "the album" as an art form in its own right, too. I'm all for changing with the times and not staying anchored to an outdated paradigm, but I also believe in the value of listening to a sequence of songs in a given order, the way the artist intended it. I'm sorry those days are disappearing, if they haven't already!

And how have you changed over these two decades? Musically speaking, I mean.

My body has decided to take all the hair off my head and turn it into little packe— Ah! We were talking musically speaking... Right! Sorry. On the musical side, we're a lot more relaxed with each other when it comes to accepting each other's input and collaborating, letting songs evolve in directions that maybe weren't on our radar at all at the start. We used to be pretty stressed and possessive about our own ideas, and there was certainly a reason for that, but it often came at the expense of everyone feeling heard. Nowadays we all feel listened to, and our writing sessions are a lot more enjoyable.

There's a fifteen-year gap between your first record and your second, then five years between the second and the third; if I do the math and extrapolate a progression, I could say the next album will come out in... a year and eight months!? Am I being too optimistic?

Ha, insufficient data, unreliable extrapolation! No, but seriously: it would be great if we'd always had this master plan and known that the gap between albums would shrink by a constant factor each time. Unfortunately that's not the case. I don't know when the next album will be. But we've got a ton of music in the works; we're certainly not short on ideas or potential material! It's also worth noting that "Turf Ascension" would have come out sooner if the pandemic hadn't thrown a wrench in the works. Who knows what the future holds now, what with all the uncertainty still tied to our post-pandemic world? It's really hard to guess. But anyway: I'll go out on a limb and say "2024" for our next album, why not? That's not a promise, mind you!

A gap of fifteen and then five years between releases strongly suggests that the Bubblemath project isn't exactly a full-time job for you as alt-prog-rockers. What do you all do for a living, and how do you balance that with the band's demands?

Sure, we all have non-Bubblemath jobs that demand most of our attention. Our bassist Jay Burritt is a flooring installer. The drummer, James Flagg, works in dubbing and audio/video production. Our singer and guitarist Jon Smith teaches music and production at a public school. The other guitarist, Blake Albinson, is a driver for a private transportation company. And I'm head of quality control at a software company. These jobs are how we make ends meet, fund our lives and, among other things, Bubblemath; which, ironically, ends up eating into a fair chunk of the time we have for Bubblemath itself.

Is there any hope of hearing your new songs live (maybe even online)?

We'd definitely love to play some festivals. Hopefully that'll happen next year. Otherwise, we're also considering doing a virtual/online performance. Follow us on Facebook for updates!

Ride the wave of great music

Add OndaRock to your favorite sources on Google Discover. Don't miss our reviews, milestones and latest news straight in your feed.

Follow on Google