Upon first listen, the Ottawa underground post-punk group We Fled Cairo sounds slightly less than competent. There is no vocalist. Melodies change multiple times throughout a song, lending an air of on-the-fly indecision to their music. At live performances, but also at times in the studio, the drummer and the guitarist will play at entirely different tempos, making their instruments sound disjointed and out of sync.

You’ll notice I said upon first listen. Because, like caviar or a fine merlot, We Fled Cairo’s savvy intermingling of melodic dissonance and syncopated time signatures is something of an acquired taste. These boys are practitioners of “math rock,” a genre typified by its reluctance to adopt ordinary rhythms and tempos, its penchant for complex, constantly-shifting melodies, and its focus on instrumental experimentation, the likes of which you will not find on broadcast radio or the shelves of your local HMV.

What at first sounds like incompetence is actually a carefully plotted upheaval of the sounds we are used to. Their newness is a little overwhelming at first, or it was so for me, but once I discarded my preconceived notions of what rock music should sound like, I was able to roundly enjoy their artistry.

I recently held a sit-down Skype interview with band members Dave Mandia and Richard Monette, both Ottawa-native Carleton alumni, to discuss their band’s distinctive sound.

The Charlatan: How are you influenced? Other bands? Experiences? The need to make noise?
Richard Monette: I think the inspiration from other artists is often more of a feeling, or a stylistic notion. A lot of music that I listen to is drum-and-bass, trip-hop kind of stuff. That’s obviously not the kind of stuff that we play as a band. But sort of the momentum, and the dynamics in that sort of music—the pacing, the building to different crescendos—is something I try to bring back to our rock ‘n’ roll kind of sound.
Dave Mandia: We can’t escape our influences, right? We’re going to listen to these bands constantly, and it’s going to find its way eventually into how I write and play, so that’s kind of what happens.

TC: Is the lack of vocalist a deliberate choice then?
RM: I don’t think a vocalist would detract from what we’re going for, but when there are lyrics, you make a very specific statement about what a song is going to be. When you take that away sometimes, you can open things up to a bit more interpretation. If you’re talking about a feeling or an emotion, the tool to use is often more abstract. It’s not as easy to say, “Here’s the thing I’m talking about.” You have to evoke that notion more than say it.

TC: But what about your titles? They’re typically kind of long and descriptive, for example, “One Day Ottawa Will Be One Big Shawarma Shop,” or “Critical Error in the Execution of Shotgun Rules.”
RM: The titles are supposed to be fun, I think. They’re supposed to be juxtaposed with the actual emotion behind the song.
DM: You take like, “Porkchop Sandwiches – Get the Fuck Out,” it’s not the happiest song. We’re hoping people will extract the actual message of the music, as if there were vocals. Songs like “Awkward Boner” sound awkward. It’s just an awkward song.

TC: I’ve noticed times when the two of you will be playing at different time signatures from each other. Was that a choice?
RM: Yes. It’s a syncopated effect.
DM: The tempos are usually 3/4, or 4/4. We’re not sitting down and saying, “You play 32/15, I’ll play 9/4.” If you want to make everything a rigorous exercise, you may as well be writing everything down.

TC: You don’t write your songs down?
RM: In my day-to-day work I’m doing computer science, I program in C++ all day, I read SIGGRAPH papers and stuff, so it’s really refreshing in the music to not have to be that rigorous. Sometimes little mistakes fall through the cracks, but often those are the best parts.