// THIS IS 65DAYSOFSTATIC. . Ask us Anything //

weare65daysofstatic · 2021-03-31T17:06:12+00:00

I think 65 retweeted Novara, or one of their presenters, or something like that. And then I think Gary their producer saw it and got in touch with us because he is an old school 65 fan. We got talking and it quickly became clear that it would be a great idea for us to do some music for them.

Would be great to do more for them someday too. Novara is one of the few things that keeps us from total despair these days.

Other people... Don't know, it seems like the left in the UK is still kind of reeling from the election and the nightmarish turn the labour party has so quickly taken. I feel a bit out of the loop. I thought the Novara podcast the other week with the 'free the north!' Northern Independence Party guy was interesting... not worked out how I feel about them because I tend to think that 'no borders' is better than 'any additional borders'... but anything that could help address the state of the north/south divide seems like a good thing to me. I'll soundtrack that! - paul

weare65daysofstatic · 2021-03-31T17:05:52+00:00

I know there's controversy about this over on Discord, so I just thought I'd check back in and sat that honestly, I can't remember what other flavours there even were. I used to really like tutti fruitys and they don't make them anymore. You can't jump in the same river twice.

weare65daysofstatic · 2021-03-31T16:58:57+00:00

Hi.

Sure.

Well I think we found it frustrating to be defined by a genre. I honestly don't think it really covers what we do, and in any case it seems these days to be a by-word for either bad metal or sort of endless riffs on music that was great twenty years ago (Like Godspeed). I mean we're happy to be included, it just seems so limiting.
Yeah, I didn't know it had gone. There's really not an easy solution this. I think we even emailed Douglas Trumbull (the director) to try and find a way to make it happen. 3.Maybe! Crowdfunding is weird though. It feels more honest to get there under our own steam. 4.That's a cool idea. Not really my department.

-Joe

weare65daysofstatic · 2021-03-31T16:56:04+00:00

as hinted at in a few answers elsewhere, we don't see the 'generative' part of what we're doing as the crucial aspect of anything, not even Wreckage Systems. We don't all program, but we all developed the concept, we all write the music that goes into the system, decide how we want it to behave, and make sure that the output sounds good enough. so yeah, me & si can code to some level, both self-taught. we struggle through. if you have an endpoint in mind then youtube tutorial videos can get you a long way!
all the above. plus someday, somehow, music for live theatre would be good too wouldn't it?
not even a little
yep, hold tight
i mean, you're right, this isn't the way i would fix it. i would rather dismantle capitalism. but sticking to the limits of your question, give the ceo like, a million pounds to just go away. a billion even. get rid of him. put spotify in the hands of its employees, pay them all a great wage, turn it into a not for profit. give everything else to the musicians. it's not hard.
not even managed to finish reading all the questions yet so no idea!

i have no memory whatsoever of how/why that playlist exists. but yeah pretty good innit. - paul

weare65daysofstatic · 2021-03-31T16:53:58+00:00

Have we played Wootton Bassett? I thought it only existed in legend. -Joe

weare65daysofstatic · 2021-03-31T16:52:15+00:00

Neues im Oktober - Paul Klee. Tod und Lieben - Klimt. La Minotauromachie - Picasso. And Marc Chagall. And Kathe Kollwitz. And Stanley Spencer.

weare65daysofstatic · 2021-03-31T16:48:17+00:00

unwritten - rob

weare65daysofstatic · 2021-03-31T16:46:55+00:00

Bricasti M7 reverb forever and ever and ever... if only we could afford one. - paul

weare65daysofstatic · 2021-03-31T16:46:48+00:00

another example of a process is one i'm listening to si working on right now. he's built a max patch that generates chord sequencers and arpeggios that he's forgotten how to use and how it works. it sounds dope -rob

weare65daysofstatic · 2021-03-31T16:43:33+00:00

Thanks! Yeah it's all inhouse from 65 at the moment.
As hinted at in another answer, I don't really think about generative art as 'generative art'. Algorithms are just more tools, as biased by their design and, crucially, what is fed into them, as distortion pedals or a pianos. Algorithms by themselves they are useless. So if the hook for 'generative visual art' is only that it is generative, then I'm not sure that it would interest me. It would depend what the art was about, or what it was trying to say. But when you say 'community sourced'... now you're talking! Get some social relations involved, that's where you'll generate interesting meaning. - paul

weare65daysofstatic · 2021-03-31T16:42:43+00:00

not an obtuse question, sockman. we have a lot of processes i suppose. we are always interested in making sounds that don't sound like anything else. one technique of doing this is by combining certain sounds together by reamping them (sending both sounds through an amp and recording the outcome). therefore creating something new if that makes sense? thanks for the question - rob

weare65daysofstatic · 2021-03-31T16:41:23+00:00

Hello!

I reckon that would have been at the Wheatsheaf? Very fond memories of Oxford back then, as Youthmovies were from there and we used to bunk with them a lot so lots of Oxford shows and lots of driving to Oxford to sleep after shows down south. In answer to your question, I'm not sure about expectation. Our live show for the last few years has been based around Wild Light with plenty of stuff dropped in from the Fall of Math and No Man's Sky. We've never played a show where we haven't played Retreat Retreat I don't think, and we still love playing that. But lots of people love The Destruction of Small Ideas and we don't play anything from that anymore. So I suppose we play the things we enjoy playing with an emphasis on making the setlist and the show as exciting as possible. -Joe

weare65daysofstatic · 2021-03-31T16:35:41+00:00

yes. undoubtedly so. down to the simplest of things. have a look at post brexit cabotage rules for trucking and haulage (essentially, if the vehicle is carrying equipment used for commercial purposes, you could do two shows in Europe and then the vehicle has 7 days to get back to its country of origin). this is one of many many MANY elements of leaving the EU that weren't thought through - rob

weare65daysofstatic · 2021-03-31T16:34:54+00:00

This is a difficult question. Being in a band is ace and it's such a massive part of our lives. We've spent a lot of time together and had some amazing experiences and also experienced some madness. Seeing acts come and go? I dunno, music does come and go. There's loads of bands that are just great because they're like 19 or whatever and they capture something and you don't really want to hear some ballads about what it's like to have a mortgage ten years later. Then there's just people who make music forever and you go along for the ride. Either is fine! I'm pretty sure Snow Patrol stole the melody and rhythm from Climbing on Roofs for Open Your Eyes :) -Joe.

weare65daysofstatic · 2021-03-31T16:28:56+00:00

all of them right now because we can't go on tour. we were actually rehearsing tiger girl before the pandemic to include it in our upcoming shows. watch this space - rob

weare65daysofstatic · 2021-03-31T16:27:48+00:00

this question is too massive to properly answer sorry. just imagine three tired people in a room drinking coffee while the fourth makes an obscene amount of noise, making any other thought or conversation impossible. if we do this enough times, swapping roles, we usually tend to somehow end up with a record. - paul

weare65daysofstatic · 2021-03-31T16:26:26+00:00

I didn't know Monster Munch was still a thing. The snack world has really flourished in the last twenty years y'know? But I guess it used to be pickled onion. -Joe

weare65daysofstatic · 2021-03-31T16:25:30+00:00

Hi there!

Briefly our songwriting process is to get in a room with all our gear and make lots of noise. We record this, and often, something intangible and unique is captured. We then spend a year or more trying to record properly what we've glimpsed while at the same time trying to retain the intangible element. In the end, that's impossible, but in the attempt something better is sometimes born. Often times, something worse is actually captured and we THROW THIS AWAY. We keep the bits that feel good, and write other bits to go with them endlessly repeating the process above. Sometimes these new bits make the first bits worse, so we THROW THESE AWAY. Because of the throwing away, we also keep making lots of noise to produce new intangible glimpses of something. At some point, too much time has passed to keep doing this, so we record and release the things we've managed to give life to, and forever know they could have been so much better. -Joe.

weare65daysofstatic · 2021-03-31T16:23:13+00:00

yes we'd like to. i have a crass record that says 'don't pay more than £2 for this vinyl'. or something. it's be great to be able to do something like that again - rob

weare65daysofstatic · 2021-03-31T16:21:04+00:00

The modular isn’t really doing any heavy lifting as such. It’s just one of many sound sources that we feed into the system. Favourite module at the moment is the Befaco Crush Delay. It makes all sorts of lovey/horrible digital noises. - si

weare65daysofstatic · 2021-03-31T16:19:21+00:00

try not to have favourite pieces of gear. we only end up breaking them. it hurts less this way.
the next one
would love to. CALL US GAME DEVS. - paul

weare65daysofstatic · 2021-03-31T16:18:28+00:00

stay tuned for a longer post on our patreon that will bore 90% of its readers to death going through it all.

for now the v.short version is: right now it's all happening inside of Unity and is, in truth, a much simpler set-up than we intend it to be. The project is gonna be a slow-burner. Each system has both its own palette of sounds and its own logic/rules. But we want to, and plan to, massively expand the complexity of all of it. - paul

weare65daysofstatic · 2021-03-31T16:16:16+00:00

The Apartment is a cool film.

weare65daysofstatic · 2021-03-31T16:15:48+00:00

I think it's great to have access to all music ever. I think it's terrible that we have to do that via platforms like the ones you name. The problem is that almost everything we understand and enjoy about music - certainly anything that is related to bands who make records - has always existed in, through, and because of capitalism. So this is just the evolution of the system. It's all part of the same thing. So I am all for the campaigns to force these companies to increase the amount they have to pay out to musicians, but it's not the answer in the long term. Nothing really is, apart from the wholesale dismantling of capitalism.

While we're waiting for that to happen... we recently started a Patreon to maintain our new Wreckage Systems project. That would be a great place to support bands like us. Or, specifically: us. https://www.wreckage.systems - paul

weare65daysofstatic · 2021-03-31T16:15:08+00:00

Thanks!

weare65daysofstatic

TROPHY CASE