Despite choosing 'Melencolia' as the record title, the artwork for this album is actually inspired by Dürer's Hands Praying. We'd been initially drawn to Sam's art because of his unique and detailed depictions of muscles and sinew, especially present in the drawing hands of the first record. The praying hands allowed Sam to revisit the themes of 'Reptiles', but add some progression. Once again Sam took the initial concept and added his own grotesque slant in the addition of visible muscle and sinew, but he also arranged the piece (as he had done previously) into a symmetrical shape, making the piece into more an emblem than a piece of art. It's lots of fun creating meaning in instrumental music, and we really enjoy the theme building process, the connection between the music and the cover art is so much more important when it's all you have to explain yourself. We totally get that some people might think it's pretentious, but we really didn't want to be another math band with meaningless song names. That said we have been quite pretentious in going as far as to introduce a little Easter egg referencing 'Reptiles' on 'Melencolia''s cover art. The Poly-Math logo is an impossible cube, it features on all our artwork and is used at the centre of the Reptiles cover, but for this record we changed the logo to an impossible triangle, which is actually a concept created and drawn by Escher. I imagine we'll do something equally over the top on our next record referencing Dürer. With this record we have aimed to be more dissonant, less riff driven than anything we've done previously, and more able to move into freeform or soundscape style pieces that we tried to give a more macabre overtone. There is an unease in Sam's artwork that we felt perfectly fits with the music we're trying to make, and the uncomfortable, often gothic scenes portrayed in Dürer's art. Poly-Math will tour the UK this April and May, catch them at:APRIL 21 Glasgow, Broadcast (w/ Lets Talk Daggers) 22 Edinburgh, Opium (w/ Lets Talk Daggers) 24 Manchester, The Crescent (w/ Lets Talk Daggers)MAY 08 Basingstoke, Sanctuary (w/ Tides From Nebula) 09 London, Boston Music Room (w/ Tides From Nebula) 10 Glasgow, Audio (w/ Tides From Nebula) 11 Leicester, Firebug (w/ Tides From Nebula)
’s Before Doors sessions
