SHEFFIELD band 65daysofstatic play Limerick for the first time when their international tour arrives here next week. The band released its debut album ten years ago. They recorded one of the last Peel Sessions at London’s Maida Vale studios. They performed with The Cure on a six month worldwide arena tour and Robert Smith lent his vocals to 2010 release ‘We Were Exploding Anyway’. Their music has been used in numerous trailers, video games and TV spots. Their recent re-score of 1972 Douglas Trumbull film ‘Silent Running’ was performed at Glasgow Film Festival and toured across Europe.
To describe 65daysofstatic as a post rock instrumental group is simply lazy hackery. It only tells part of the story, listening to their new album ‘Wild Light’ which came out in September – it is difficult to tell in their music where the post-rock ends and the electronica begins. The lines between the so called genres are truly blurred.
When Limerick Post spoke to Paul Wolinski of 65daysofstatic, we agreed that, yes, they don’t have a singer and they definitely create epic soundscapes that will rock any venue to its foundations at a live gig.
Paul Wolinski, responsible for piano/guitars/programming in 65daysofstatic says, “Genres and categorisations are useful for people to be able to talk about music and useful for music writers to be able to describe things. But there is nothing to say that has to be adhered to by anyone that is making music, you can make whatever you like. It doesn’t have to fall into any parameters that anyone has designed because those parameters are made up to begin with.”
So does 65daysofstatic owe a debt to the likes of Chemical Bros and Orbital for popularising instrumental music?
Paul Wolinski: “That is the sort of music I grew up listening to. I came to guitars a little bit later. I always found it interesting that a band with guitars that don’t have singing are always called an instrumental band or a post rock band or whatever. Eectronic bands like Orbital don’t have the instrumental prefix as often. They are a dance band or an electronica band. The lack of singing is not as big a deal for those kind of bands. Which has always been interesting, I guess when you have four guys standing on a stage with guitars its just a well worn template. If you don’t have a frontman you feel like someone is missing whereas people behind electronic equipment don’t have that pressure to have that person in the limelight
Certainly in terms of Orbital, Chemical Bros or Prodigy, bringing those breakthrough tracks that get interesting, instrumental music into the charts gradually kind of help creep things forward further down the line for bands like us.”
With music that puts the listener in the eye of a sound storm, is it important to 65daysofstatic that ‘Wild Light’ is heard on high quality formats, vinyl, CD etc?
Paul Wolinski: “I’m not really an audiophile or a purist in the way that some people are. I’m quite happy with listening to stuff digitally these days. I do still think there is a big difference between high bitrate and low bitrate MP3s. There is nothing more frustrating than having all that dynamic squashed out of the music in the name of saving a few megabytes.”
Are you concerned about your work being shared on torrent sites as poor quality MP3s?
Paul Wolinski: “We are still part of this incredibly old fashioned music industry that has its head in the sand about a lot of these things. I mean, we wanted to actually torrent our record on the day of the release, because we knew that by doing it ourselves, rather than pretend it is not going to happen, we could control the quality of what is released and make sure that it is a good digital version. If people are going to listen to it for free anyway, I’d rather that they listened to a good version of it. Because whoever pirates it first, that will be the version that will be up there for ever. As soon as we suggested that, to our record label, they said, ‘no way’.”
So, what can the punters expect from the first Limerick show from 65daysofstatic?
Paul Wolinski: “We worked really hard to make this our best sounding record. Rather than putting the definitive versions of the songs on the record, we made the best versions of the songs for a record listening experience but they are not necessarily the exact songs that we play live. It is another good thing about not having a singer, the live versions of the songs are made to work best in the environment they are going to be heard in, such as ‘Prisms’ which has big sub bass which has that huge note at the beginning which is heavily emphasised in the live show. What is more fun than listening to massive sub bass at a live show when your ribs are shaking?”
Limerick Post couldn’t agree more. Expect a rib shaking journey into a guitar-synth hinterland when 65daysofstatic play next Thursday January 16 in Dolans Warehouse.
by Eric FitzGerald eric@limerickpost.ie
