65daysofstatic

“the most vital, enthralling and unrelenting record of 2005” 4.5/5 - Drowned In Sound

"As far as burgeoning British bands go, right now it doesn’t get any better than this” KKKK - Kerrang!

“Opening with infectious piano chords before building into an intelligent dance/drum ‘n’ bass/drag beat crescendo, mixed with metallic guitar, drums and the kitchen sink, the Static are back and doing what they do even better than before. Although it’s near impossible to follow-up their legendary debut, ‘The Fall Of Math’s rave reviews, ‘One Time For All Time’ is so full of emotion that it’s simultaneously sombre and uplifting. Take ‘Welcome To The Times’ with it’s synth-fuelled melodies and ‘Mean Low Water’ which begins as avant post-rock before unleashing itself into an apocalyptic samurai math-beat onslaught. Elsewhere, tracks like ‘Await Rescue’ and ‘Climbing On Roofs’ sounds as if they’ve come straight from Warp or Rephlex Record’s cannon-yet their diversity on tracks like ‘Radio Protector’ separates them even from these. So far, so good; two shots and two goals and providing they don’t get lazy, we could be in for a hat trick.” 9/10 - Terrorizer

“an inventive, powerful, sonic experience... epic closer Radio Protector is unforgettable" **** - Metro (London)

"65 Days of Static, however, genuinely seem intent on gatecrashing a genre and redefining its boundaries.Their knack of infusing levitating, Mogwai- esque ambience with skittish, industrialised breakbeats is truly without precedent." KKKK
- Kerrang!

Most bands form and then make a conscious choice to imitate, plagiarise and become a pastiche of their idols. The music buying public love to be reminded of the good times; the old times; the familiar. It’s the reason we've had The Beatles, The Clash and The Stooges clones plague our minds, radio, newspapers, TV, and our souls for the past twenty-five years. It’s the reason guitar based music has driven itself into a rut; become stale, bland, tired and overblown. Time for an overhaul.

But that’s most bands, and it’s clear that 65 Days of Static have no intention of being some retro-fuck entity. Nestling themselves in a scene loosely called math-rock or post-rock, they appear to have broken the golden alt-rock rule of not using computers, samplers, electronics etc (it’s not real music you know). Instead of sounding like some scrappy, mix-genre soundclash, 65 Days of Static take your pre-conceptions and smash them into a million pieces.

'Retreat! Retreat!' swoops in with a glorious, spine tingling glockenspiel intro, which gives way to a riff that is so wide, so heavy, so burnt that it hurts; it's heart wrenching stuff. 'The Cat Is a Landmine' weaves in and out like Venetian Snares vs a monged Godspeed! You Black Emperor. 'Aren’t We All Running' uses a moribund prog-rock piano intro and calmly sits back and lets the guitars and drums (the drummer clearly having eight arms on this track) walk in and bludgeon you with reckless abandon. It is pure passion, and it’s clear that 'The Fall of Math' was created to worship the beauty of music. Radiohead took three albums to become this adventurous and IDM is still too afraid to include live instruments on this level; when the Mercury Music Prize comes around the judges won’t go anywhere near this.

Go home, take your play safe indie-punk records and burn them. 65 Days of Static have their heads in 2007 and everyone else is thirty years behind…… Magnificent. (4.5/5)
- Playlouder

"We assume you're here because you like music, or are aware of exciting developments in a musical world existing beneath the mainstream. As part of a seemingly blossoming new form of complex but enjoyable guitar music, spearheaded by bands such as Youthmovie Soundtrack Strategies, Mono, Mondo et al, the term 'post-rock' is often applied. But its use of the prefix 'post-', although presumably encompassing the weight of influence and how it has been developed, does little to suggest how the majority of these bands have and will be inspirational as well as inspired. Listening to The Fall Of Math, the first album from controlled-noise tykes 65*DAYSOFSTATIC, you can see why it may be problematic as a term, broad or not - for if this sort of indescribably wonderful clamour doesn't influence countless ensembles in its wake then we'll eat our own effects pedals.

Consider the evidence. Opening track another code against the gone throws up impressions of Kraftwerk's last album or Boards Of Canada's Geogaddi - or indeed the bulk of 'electronic' records released over the last decade - growing muscles and subsequently turning on their creators. It soon follows on to install a break in the heart that clucks time in arabic (nope, us neither), and when we say that a frantic utilisation of Explosions In The Sky's crescendo tactics with pretty computer noise leading to earth-trembling drums still doesn't do it full justice, we don't say it lightly. retreat! retreat! is much more direct, as it quickly switches from glockenspiel-style twinkling to a glorious, sparkling and utterly exhilarating piece of alt.rock force, sounding so intense and enormous that you could almost dive in. Meanwhile i swallowed hard, like i understood flickers with the sort of complex glitch rhythms that could make Aphex Twin scream with enlightenment, whilst pummelling out weighty post-rock-shaped guitar not unlike Mogwai beating their chests in abandonment - and same goes for the title track, but while flicking between comforting yet slightly unnerving electronic plinks and plonks. What's more, tracks like hole, with its string-laden rush and stop-start feedback-drenched wall-of-sound guitar shifting, have inventiveness practically glowing off of them yet retain an accessibility (or rather sensibility) to outshine most purely 'pop' songs. Initially it's beguiling, but soon it's understandable and more than a little pleasing. That The Fall Of Math as an album can retain the dynamics, fraught tension and climactic explosiveness of its peers and influences, whilst still sounding like one of the most urgent and direct long-player releases of the year, is worthy of our praise indeed.

Music's about escapism, right? About taking you somewhere otherworldly, somewhere else. This album is a dark, tempestuous but highly inviting place that you could quite easily lose yourself in, and there's a real chance that you won't want to return. Further artillery against the argument that music isn't exciting at the moment.

Like music? Go fetch." (4.5/5) - Drowned In Sound

"The future, as Sheffield four piece 65daysofstatic are only too aware, is not transmitted, it's recieved, even when the signal is nothing but noise. While waiting for the block to clear, however, they trace pictures of apocalyptic grandeur out of dense audio scribble. A breakneck descent into electronically rendered sheet metal guitar, rattling drum n' bass and - you know you want them - Prog keyboards means that, like all moments of intense ending, there's never a dull moment. Cities are laid waste, warrior bands fall back on their swords and, when 65DOS tell you "this cat is a landmine", you'd better believe it's true." - The Wire

"sometimes something comes along and shakes your head, takes you by surprise, delights you unexpectedly and reminds you why you were doing… this… in the first place. I have never put a CD in the player hoping to be disappointed, although these days I’m often expecting to be.

65daysofstatic’s first album, The Fall of Math, was good, but flawed. Their second, One Time for All Time, was even more flawed; like someone shouting into the wilderness to protest the city, it had good intentions but the wrong direction. Their third album, The Destruction of Small Ideas, blows their previous recorded output clean away. I gather that, distraught with an industry beset by Meatloaf’s mantra that everything be louder than everything else, they deliberately set out to make a quieter record, a more dynamic record, a record that stands out from its peers, that actually moves itself and you and, despite the lack of words, means something.

The Destruction of Small Ideas takes the bar for postrock, where postrock genuinely means what comes after rock is done with, and raises it considerably from where it has settled in the last few years. See that Battles record? This is as good, albeit coming from the opposite direction. Initial radar observations of 65daysofstatic three or four years ago suggested IDM with guitars; and perhaps they were. Now… no. Pianos, genuine, delicate, almost inaudible pianos; drums, roiling and pounding and snapping and rolling across your head; guitars, lachrymose or tectonic or nasty; spectres of electricity, hexadecimal algorithms taking binary data packages and translating them via networks into something organic and anthropomorphic. Making the robotic human where Battles make the human robotic. I’m not sure which is the best trick. Strings (horsehair on catgut, adhesive and vibrating), a ticking hard-drive, sheets of corrugated steel (flexed and resonated), Formula One cars downshifting into chicanes and over-steering left-handers, thunder, clammy tarmac at the height of summer.

The first five tracks will take you by surprise, “These Things You Can’t Unlearn” climaxing in proximity alarms and carbon dust. “Lyonesse”, following, has a parlor piano slowly eaten away from the outside by radioactivity, but the real surprise is that it gets better. “The Distant & Mechanised Glow of Eastern European Dance Parties” is an actual infusion of electronica rather than borrowed and misunderstood signifiers; “Music Is Music as Devices Are Kisses Is Everything” is as good as, improbably, its title, more subtle piano patterns, inhumanly real drums, soporific falls from momentum and rises back again. The last three songs? Better still.

65daysofstatic have made their masterpiece, or something close to it; three albums in, in the most dirty, shallow decade of music we’ve known, who else can say that? A handful, not enough. The Destruction of Small Ideas is a weight, a tower of babel, a journey, learnings, understandings, communication, evolution. I’ve been waiting. I was promised this or something like it. The rise and fall. All so deep, so rich, so comically dynamic and detailed and powerful for it that it makes me want to cry. How to make a record. Play loud. Rating: A-" -Stylus Magazine - Stylus Magazine

"Where to start? Do I mention the impeccable musicianship, the soaring and near perfect soundscapes created by this band, or the fact that it fully immerses the listener? It can be hard to review album fairly, you need to strike a balance, no matter how much you love an album you must highlight it's flaws. Similarly, if you hate it, you must point out any good points it has.

Which brings me to this, the second full length album from Sheffield band 65daysofstatic. They aren't a band as such, more a collective of insanely talented musicians. They don't make music, they make aural soundscapes. You won't find a chorus here, nor a verse for that matter. Each song progresses towards a crushing climax, rather than follow a set formula. For this reason there isn't really a lot of point mentioning song titles, each track merges into the next, creating an ALBUM as a piece rather than a collection 12 separate tracks.

This album is stunning, absolutely beautiful. I've listened through it several times now and can genuinely find only one fault. If you aren't a hardened music fan, you may find it hard going. It's the closest thing you'll get to neo-classical music, so if classical isn't your thing, and rock isn't your thing, then stay away, or try it, and really work with it, the rewards are more than worth it.

Special mention must go to the drummer. Quite honestly the hardest working musician I have ever heard. His is the main instrument on most tracks. He doesn't just keep time, he almost plays a tune.

Sorry if this has been a long review, but quite simply, this is the greatest album released in the last two years. It has no faults. Not one. I urge every single person who has read this review to beg, borrow or steal a copy. Please. Give 65daysofstatic the recognition they so richly deserve. 10/10"
- Insider Guides