Quarantine Interviews // 65daysofstatic

Answered by Paul

1) What was the impetus behind the new single? How did that came together?

The last single was a song we put out called ASYMMETRY. It was hastily written/mixed and released last week. It was a few days into the ongoing, horrific airstrikes on Gaza. It’s a bad, powerless feeling watching footage of these war crimes and their results spread around the internet, (although obviously incomparable to being affected directly). We just wanted to use our little platform to do something useful and so made a song about it, stuck in on Bandcamp priced at pay what-you-feel, with all proceeds going to medical aid in Gaza, with us matching the sales. We tried not to make it sound too bleak. It’s supposed to sound like a better future, one in which Palestine is free.

At this point, the song is still available, but we’d ask people who want it not to pay us, but rather download it for free and consider throwing a bit of cash in the direction of Medical Aid for Palestine.

AID: https://www.map.org.uk SONG:
https://65daysofstatic.bandcamp.com/track/asymmetry

2) How are you dealing with quarantine?

We decided to launch a stupidly ambitious project called Wreckage Systems (www.wreckage.systems). It’s a 24/7 livestream of endlessly changing generative audio, and is the first project out of what we have finally formalized as ‘65LABS’, the more experimental/noise/research wing of 65daysofstatic. We’ve been doing things like sound installations, scores, making software, making instruments and so on for years now, and decided it was about to we made a distinction between our more traditional band output albums, touring, etc. – and this other path we’re travelling.  I guess I would summarize 65LABS as us looking for new ways that bands can exist, make and share music.

We’re currently split across two different countries as a band too, so the pandemic has meant we haven’t been in the same room for more than a year. It’s not like we really needed an excuse to spend more time in front of computers, but at the moment 65daysofstatic can only really exist as low bandwidth data packets bouncing across Europe, so that’s pretty much how we’re making it work.

3) What advice would you give other artists dealing with it?

It’s all really tough isn’t it. I am no authority on the subject, all I would suggest is that it’s important not to beat yourself up if you’re not feeling particularly inspired to make your art. Despite Wreckage Systems being a huge undertaking, I don’t wanna give the impression that we have been super productive. There’s been a huge amount of downtime and distinctly uncreative days/weeks/probably months in terms of making music. Sinking time into books or computer games or some of the absolute trash that makes up 99% of Netflix is all fine. Whatever gets you through the day.

4) What have you/the band been listening to lately?

I have no clue about new music at the moment. But I was just listening to ‘My Name is Jonas’ by Weezer and it struck me how important having a good and healthy pop culture is because it creates these artifacts that, when they are good, can both manifest the time you first heard them in a really comforting way, but also move forward through time and change with you, stripping themselves of nostalgia or sentimentality. So, like, when I first heard ‘My Name is Jonas’ I loved it simply because it was Weezer and I was 13.

And then in my twenties when all I could think about was being in/getting better at being in a band, I loved it because it was a perfectly formed slice of pop music that taught me things about putting noise in cool shapes. And today when I listened to it, for the first time in years I guess, it sounded old and new at the same time and what stood out the most was that it sounded like an ode to unions and organizing and striking, which is a politics very close to my heart. I’ve no idea if that’s what they meant it to be about or not, but that doesn’t really matter cos, like any great pop song, it doesn’t belong to Weezer any more, it belongs to all of us and can be whatever we want it to be.

Oh, actually I like the new Godspeed record a lot now I’ve heard it a few times. And am impatiently waiting for Lorde to put out something new because once that happens I won’t need to listen to anything else for about a year.