Customer Reviews

The Destruction Of Small Ideas

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

65daysofstatic is a band who has managed to make creative and interesting post-rock. The songs on this album never get boring or repetitive. The instruments are used intricately and wisely to keep the listener intrigued. If you like Explosions in the Sky, Mogwai, Mono or any post-rock band, give this album a try. I think you'll love it.

I have heard this band for a couple of years now and there is no doubt in my mind that this musical proposal is one of the clear ways that music will take in the future. There are fantastic new bands that seize technology and experiment with contemporary harmonies. These guys are not only experimenting but creating laws for the future of music. What we have in our hands is the result of musical geniuses that seem to be too concentrated on their works to care about what's sticky and what's not. The cents you spend in other alike projects are wrong invested. Bet for this beast! This is an excellent album but the Fall of Math might be the grand opening that you need to taste if this is the first of 65 days of static.

It must be hard to be 65daysofstatic. Firstly, you are brilliant, full of ideas, forging your own musical territory and (from all reports) absolutely dynamite live. On the other hand, the Michael-Jackson-sized success that you know you deserve is elusive and you're spending years in a crappy van driving around Europe playing Austrian rock festivals that are frankly beneath you.

From their debut album "The Fall of Math", I was hooked on these guys: Mogwai plus Autechre beats with contagious energy and passion. They have the attack of Metallica, with a similar instinct for rather gloomy drama, but the overall effect is thrilling and kinetic. Imagine Battles, if Battles wasn't the product of 40-year-old jazz-loving virtuosi, but of 20-year old rave heads. "...Math" felt like a great thing starting, some young guys finding their feet and starting to believe that they really had something.

But then "One time for all time", the follow up, was a disappointment, almost a dilution - more rock-y, more mood, less wide-eyed wonder at their new creation: I almost lost faith. "The Destruction of Small Ideas" is the third album and asked the question - which way now? Where did the future go?

Cut the preamble: they found the future again. This is a synthesis of the ideas from both the preceding LP's - from the sly acknowledgment of the difficulties of being 65DoS by calling the lead track "When we were younger and better", with a style that harks more directly back to "Math".

The quieter, moodier tones of "Small Ideas" show up scattered about, largely in the use of the piano in the foreground: "Lyonesse" is built around a refrain that gradually gets momentarily overwhelmed by apocalyptic beats, which then die away to leave an melodic afterglow.

Many of the tracks share the same DNA, and to be honest, there are three or four tracks on here that are largely interchangeable: "White Peak/Dark Peak" stands out as the archetype, with a quiet/loud dynamic that is simple (hello Mogwai, again), but effective.

Anyways - listen to the clips for a fairly accurate sense of what is going on here. The track that gives this an extra star as "The Distant & Mechanized Glow Of Eastern European Dance Parties", which lives up to the title, by including synth chords, splatterbeats, and guitars. The variety that this adds lightens the whole experience of listening end to end that "One Time" was missing.

I highly recommend the EP of "Dance Parties", which includes mixes and extra tracks that take the 'club' aesthetic of this track even further and provide an exciting pointer to where the future might take 65DoS next. And so, it feels appropriate to get all excited about 65DoS all over again. This album is good not great, (Fall of Math *was* great), but I think day-time rotation may yet be in your future.

65DaysofStatic has done it again in their new album "The Destruction of Small Ideas". Building on the foundation of "The Fall of Math" album, this CD erupts into a musical masterpiece with every song that only 65DOS could bring. 5 Stars all around.

This is not the 65daysofstatic I know and love. One Time For All Time is by far one of my favourite albums of all time. It's an absolute masterpiece with brilliant songs which are beautifully put together and sound absolutely amazing.

The title of 65daysofstatic's latest album does the album justice. What have they done? The production values are brutal, the songs themselves don't do anything for me (after hearing Radio Protector from One Time For All Time, my expectations for this band are very high), and overall I'm disappointed with this album. Speaking figuratively, One Time For All Time moved me deeply, yet The Destruction of Small Ideas doesn't even budge me.

I hate to give such a great band such a low rating, but I feel that I have to. Very disappointed. 3/5.