Elephant Gym: the maths behind math rock
The epitome of Taiwanese math rock Elephant Gym sat down with me moments before their Bristol gig to talk about everything from making their album World, experimenting beyond math rock, and their ambitions with revolutionising the Taiwanese independent music scene.
Elephant Gym’s bassist KT Chang on stage in Bristol’s Strange Brew. (Photographer: Shan-Huai Chiang)
In the backstage of Bristol’s independent live music hub Strange Brew, I sat down with the three-piece Taiwanese math-rock band Elephant Gym two hours before they took the stage, while their opening act Seneca soundchecked on the other side of the door. The trio, consisting of bassist KT Chang, her guitarist brother Tell Chang, and drummer Chia-Chin Tu, is known for their bass-driven melodies and their dynamic asymmetrical rhythms. Bristol is only the 29th stop of their 48-city world tour across five continents for their aptly named new album World. While busy moving gears from Barcelona to Milan two weeks ago, the band learned that they have been nominated Best Band and Album of the Year for the 2024 Golden Melody Awards (GMA), commonly known as the Grammys of the Chinese-speaking world.
GMA’s album awards are categorised by language, which include Best Mandarin, Taiwanese-Hokkien, Taiwanese Hakka, and Taiwanese Indigenous album awards. The usual rule is that all albums nominated for the above awards will automatically be nominated for Album of the Year. “Our albums don’t usually have a primary language so in past years we didn’t have the chance to submit our albums,” explained Chia-Chin. “We feel grateful that the jury decided to change the rules this year to include us and our album World.”
World is a playful experiment that celebrates the band’s 10th anniversary, part of which reimagined some of Elephant Gym’s past work. “When the band first started we were mostly just having fun, then we entered a competitive phase of trying very hard to prove our ability in math-rock with the most complex rhythmic structures and the most sophisticated techniques,” KT recalled. “But when creating World we tried not to confine ourselves to any genre and relaxed back into the mentality of creating music that sounds good instead of difficult.”
As its name suggests, a key part of World was also inviting collaborations with artists of different genres from around the world. These include one with Seiji Kameda, the bassist of Japanese experimental rock band Tokyo Jihen, whom Elephant Gym grew up listening to. “When Mr. Kameda sent over the demo, we saw that he named the file with my name KT; when the band was still composing we also called the unnamed song Kameda,” said KT with excitement. “So we decided to name the song Name because we realised we’ve been thinking about each others’ names when creating something utterly special.” Name resulted in an unconventional, jazzy parallel of two intertwining basslines, which complemented and layered on top of each other throughout the track.
“We did another experiment with the song Feather, where we invited Taiwanese jazz and soul singer ?te (pronounced why-ta) and Japanese R&B singer TENDRE to interpret the same instrumental arrangement,” added Chia-Chin. “We have had songs with alternate language versions but they were only lyrically adapted to expand our market reach, while Feather is an artistic clash with the artists’ own melodies.”
When working with Indian Canadian songwriter Shashaa Tirupati on the song Jhalleyaa, Elephant Gym had to figure out a middle ground between their experimental sounds and Tirupati’s classic Bollywood tunes, as well as the miscommunications with exchanging files and payments. “World was produced in a rather short window of time — besides matching different styles of music, a lot of time was spent managing the logistics of international collaborations and building trust,” Tell reminded.
Within the band, Elephant Gym has figured out several systems to balance the three members’ creative input. “We all are inspired by music beyond just post-rock and math-rock, and the music we like really differs,” Chia-Chin pointed out. Although the band’s lead instrument is the bass guitar, each song has a designated producer who decides what references to look at and also directs the structure of the song. “Each of us would then come up with up to five different compositions with our respective instruments to give each other a lot of options to work with,” explained KT.
“A lot of times the feeling I want to create with my drum gets lost after the other members’ input,” added Chia-Chin. “But as soon as I put my references back in it becomes a whole new layer of chemistry — the repetition of this process is what makes our music so unique.”
Bassist KT Chang (left) and drummer Chia-Chin Tu on stage in Bristol. (Photographer: Anderson Shao-Wei Hung)
Hailing from Kaohsiung, a city in southern Taiwan, Elephant Gym always tries to include traces of home. World features the Kaohsiung City Wind Orchestra, and the band has previously featured Chio-Tian Folk Drums & Art Troupe, a collective exploring the artistic possibilities of the Taiwanese temple parade culture. “We’ve been trying to find the sounds that represent Taiwan, but it's impossible without crossing and clashing boundaries,” said KT.
When considering what it means to be a Taiwanese band, Elephant Gym treats it as a rather natural process. “All three of us are into very different music, so we usually step back from figuring out what Taiwanese math-rock sounds like,” added Chia-Chin. “If we are Taiwanese and grew up in Taiwan, we don’t have to intentionally add anything to our music to make it Taiwanese.”
Instead of defining what Taiwanese math-rock is, Tell is more concerned with the environment that it’s made in. In 2016, Elephant Gym left Taipei and returned to Kaohsiung to start their own studio in an old storage space Tell and KT inherited from their grandfather. The studio allowed better access for production and having a base made collaboration within the band easier. However, parts of post-production still rely on resources in Taipei or even abroad.
“Imagine a music scene that gives you the right resources to produce world-class music without having to leave your hometown,” Tell explained. “Rather than hypothesising the future sound of Taiwanese music, it’s more important to take action and create a professional scene that empowers young musicians to make music that can survive on the market for the world to appreciate, or else it wouldn’t hold any cultural relevance.”
In Tell’s words, Taiwanese music isn’t defined by its aural quality. “When you are limited to what you have but still produce world-class music, that’s what makes Taiwanese music Taiwanese.”
Elephant Gym on stage in Bristol. (Photographers: Shan-Huai Chiang, Anderson Shao-Wei Hung)
The band looked rightfully exhausted from the tour but glowed up again when talking about their music. “Performing on stage feels like a dream, but off stage, we have to deal with reality — missing drum pieces, organisers failing to book accommodations ahead, and all the hours spent on moving everything and everyone across Europe,” said KT, while allowing herself a wry smile. This conversation also brought back memories of a full van of luggage getting stolen in Leeds while on their 2019 tour — a true British experience indeed. “At this moment, we just want to survive this tour and bring a solid Elephant Gym experience to the world.”
As Tell introduces Taiwan to the audience on stage, a person in the audience interrupted by shouting, “Taiwan is part of China,” causing a moment of awkwardness in the space.“We always try to express how proud we are coming from Taiwan, but people would still be there to instigate conflict,” confessed KT in a Facebook post later that night. “The power of politics comes from the fact that any audience can provoke you anytime to make you feel like you’ve done something wrong — throughout the concert, I was thinking about whether or not the person who shouted would attack us.”
On stage, Tell collected himself and responded, “we have super complicated international relations and politics, so every man has to serve the military including me and our drummer, so we’re grateful that I’m holding a guitar right now, instead of a rifle.”
