Long before Ra Ra Riot performed a single note of its dancetronic third album, Beta Love (Barsuk), the band talked at great length about the need for a change. The viscerally charged chamber-pop outfit had maintained a steady course after the tragic 2007 drowning death of beloved drummer John Pike, blossomed on its 2008 Barsuk full-length debut, The Rhumb Line, and flourished with a variety of subsequent beatkeepers, but everyone felt the inevitable tug of creative evolution after 2010 sophomore album The Orchard. The roles of violinist Rebecca Zeller and guitarist Milo Bonacci changed the most dramatically; with the dominance of the synthesizer on Beta Love, Bonacci was forced to radically reimagine/rewrite his guitar contributions and take on more expansive sonic duties, while Zeller was freed up to explore new approaches with her instrument and the spare strings the band utilized. Bassist Mathieu Santos will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our brand new Ra Ra Riot feature.
Santos: I consider myself a relatively smart person, but my capacity for understanding science and math is hilariously awful. Unfortunately, I am very much interested in such concepts, particularly as they apply to more theoretical sciences, and so it’s very difficult for me to find interesting, relatable books that aren’t written either for a theoretical physicist or for a child. Luckily, James Gleick has written an extraordinarily readable book about one of the most fascinating areas of science: chaos theory. There are so many ideas packed into Chaos that I’m halfway through a second reading (and I already know there will be plenty more). I find chaos theory easy to read about, because it sort of confirms a lot of things I’ve always instinctively felt about the way things work, and also because it is the foundation of another one of my favorite books (and movies) of all-time, Jurassic Park.
Video after the jump.
