A phone call with your child can sometimes bring an unexpected kind of clarity. The worries don’t disappear, and life doesn’t suddenly become simple, but for a moment, you recognise how much good exists alongside everything you fear. On “Infinity,” Myth Math turns that feeling into a song about family, loss, and the things we cannot fully understand.
Myth Math is the project of Matthew S, founder of independent label Illegal Art, which built its reputation between 1998 and 2012 through experimental, sample-based music. After putting the label on hiatus, Matthew has returned with a new run of releases, beginning with the Tongues EP. The project also marks a more personal chapter for him, moving away from the layers of aliases he used throughout his earlier work.
“I became attracted to the idea of saying I’m just a person, with no illusion of a larger project,” Matthew explains. That shift feels particularly relevant to “Infinity,” a track whose expansive electronic ideas surround a deeply personal subject.
The song begins in dream-pop territory, with spacious synth melodies and effects-laden vocals creating the feeling of a message travelling across an immense distance. But it refuses to stay in one place for long. Grand synth swells give way to sparse, robotic electronics before live drums and oscillating synths push the track into more restless territory. The rhythms gather force, building towards an ecstatic climax before the music gradually returns to the spacious atmosphere that opened the song.
These changes give “Infinity” a sense of movement that suits its subject. Love, loss, family, and the unknown rarely follow a straight line, and the track’s shifting arrangement reflects that uncertainty. Its electronic details may feel otherworldly, but the emotional centre is grounded in ordinary human connections.
Matthew says the song began with a moment of hearing his son’s voice on the phone. Despite the usual worries that come with being a parent, he recognised how profoundly his son’s life was filled with goodness. From there, the song reaches into more difficult territory, including the family’s journey away from a multigenerational religion and the experience of tragic death.
The lyrics hold these different feelings together without trying to explain everything. Images of a loved one’s cold body, a poem left behind, closed eyes, and moonbeams sit alongside the reassuring words, “You’re doing alright.” The song doesn’t offer certainty about life or death. Instead, it finds comfort in the connections that remain meaningful when certainty is impossible.
The accompanying homemade video extends that personal perspective through footage of Matthew’s home, family photographs, a labyrinth, moon art, and video games created by family members. Rather than separating the music from the life that inspired it, the visuals bring those personal details into the same creative space.
As the centrepiece of Tongues, “Infinity” introduces a more identifiable side of Myth Math without abandoning the experimental instincts associated with Matthew’s earlier work. Its electronic world may stretch towards the infinite, but its most affecting moments come from something much closer: the love we carry for the people who shape our lives.
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