65 news

Alright then.

For the past few weeks 65’s time has been taken up almost exclusively with:

A - Advanced Accountancy Techniques
B - Remixing The Cure

The Cure asked us personally to remix all four of their new singles, which was a lot of noise condensed into a short two and a half week period. We came out the other side with bruised ears and cautious smiles. It seems that their label have upped the stakes by adding some big names to their remix e.p -  bands we imagine you have about the same amount of respect for as we do. They’ll certainly open up our music to new markets we’ve not been able to reach yet! The Cure though are fucking great and have managed to negotiate around the fact that nobody has heard of us by stitching all of our remixes together and putting it on the e.p as one 20minute track. Four remixes in one! It has been called ‘Exploding Head Syndrome‘. It is reassuringly confusing, so we recommend that you check it out. It’s out 13th September on A MAJOR LABEL! (although the royalties are going to the Red Cross). This is how far we have come, people! We’re gonna see if we can get in touch with Jared Leto now that we’re ‘cd buddies’ and see if he can divert perhaps 5% of the budget for his next 30 Seconds to Mars video to us so we can live off it for the next five years and make about a million albums.

We’re rolling with the big guns now, 65kids. Soon we’ll be able to start selling our music to adverts! Oh, wait…

Anyway. We actually did two different remixes of ‘The Only One’, and have been told that the one which isn’t included on ‘Exploding Head Syndrome’ will be available as an exclusive if you buy from iTunes. So. Investigate that too. Or you could skip iTunes, give a bit of cash straight to The Red Cross and find it on the torrents instead. The choice is yours.

Secondly, there is an article, which will perhaps turn into some kind of open debate, about the nature of remixing. It is written by us. It is appearing on The Quietus by the end of today. You can read it here. We hope that it will be of some interest to you. There are literally dozens of inconsistencies with the ideas we put forward so please go and post arguments against any or all of the points made. And if anyone has a copy of that unofficial 65 remix album that somebody compiled and was floating round our messageboard a little while ago, then if you wanna pass that around too we don’t mind.

You might stop hearing from us for a while soon.
But we won’t have disappeared. We’ll just be hiding.

Take care, 65kids.
65

Curiouser and Curiouser!

We have been down a fucking rabbit hole, no mistake. The last time we scrawled on this little corner of the internet we were in LA, and since then, no word. We can only pray you haven’t felt neglected.

So after a blown out tyre, a day between the dust devils in the desert literally chasing time zones, drunk driving in Texas, an impossible headshot, an impromptu barbecue, an imaginary shark attack in the midnight ocean, two gallons of pirate gin, an encounter with a raccoonicorn, a dawn thunderstorm, and several blurry sleepless days in New York City, we did get the fuck out of Dodge and back to Sheffield.

Currently well on our way to obliterating our annual touring record, we’ve played something like 76 shows since the 9th February this year.
Guinness? Yes. Book of records? No.
We closed the curtain on this year’s touring debacle with a classically anticlimactic show at Guilfest last weekend. Amidst the ruins of an overheated and suspiciously small PA we spent most of our allotted set time re-patching the monitors so they made sound, before blindly launching into what could have developed into a most enjoyable evening. Only to be told we’d run out of time. Fully prepared to carry on until the plug was pulled, we were foiled once more when the power decided to actually stop altogether, right in the middle of some drum and bass.
Prior to this however, we did deliver this remarkably polite and optimistic interview, in which we used the word “flabbergast”, only to have our hopes shattered a mere two hours later. Please note that if you click on this link, the internet will try and sell you a phone, that dances by itself:

ROCKSOUND TV

Spectacular!

And here we are back in the City of Steel, where the weeds are a little longer and the streets a little emptier. The cat is waiting for fledgling birds to tip and fall from ivy nests into it’s waiting mouth and we place books or newspapers over our cups to stop boozy flies falling in, until the owls start in the gloomy shade of the evening. Ha!

Fuck that melancholy shit though. This:

Most of the experiences we’ve had this year we owe to the Cure and their honourable companions who have helped us out endlessly and selflessly. Plus they’re a pretty good laugh. We risk a public display of emotion and offer our greatest thanks.
There ain’t no cure for love.

We’re off now, and for a while, to answer the following interesting and exciting questions:

Shall we make an album?
When shall make it?
How are we going to pay for it?
Who is going to listen to it?
Does this milk smell alright to you?

In the meantime, good luck.
The new Batman film’s out soon, so there is something to look forward to.

I got 65 problems but the glitch ain’t one. Hit me.
Viva la Republic.
X

Today we remain in Los Angeles, home of Mathematics.
There’s famous people falling out of our shoes here and the smog is shining and we saw King Kong at Universal Studios about 48 hours before his untimely demise.

Like Billy Joel says, ‘We didn’t start the fire’.
Or like Billy Joe says, ‘One nation controlled by the media’ (© WB Music Corp).

Yesterday we played at the Hollywood Bowl and our computer decided to switch itself off at the beginning of Await Rescue. At the end of Await Rescue (we did an ‘analogue’ version of it) we switched the computer back on and it tried to deafen the entire audience. This was probably kinda cool because it looked like quite a lot of them hadn’t noticed that there was a band on stage.

Today is a 2nd sold-out Cure show in LA at The Shrine, which is essentially ‘Carter Beats the Devil’ in the shape of a theatre. Or theater. The basement is haunted. Only Simon and Rob have been down there so far.

Like Ray Parker Jr says, ‘I ain’t afraid of no ghost’.

We’re thinking about opening with some techno and ending with drum’n'bass and white noise tonight. We’ve been trying to avoid these tactics because, y’know, we’re supposed to be making people like us. But there’s only so many times we can play heartbreaking, breathtakingly beautiful, too-mighty-for-words, glorious, masterful, epic post-rock songs to make audiences weep and kiss before we bore ourselves to sleep. We held back at the Bowl because we were on when the sun was still out and people were just getting settled, tucking into their nachos and burgers. Four tiny people flailing away to a laptop might have looked a little silly to those up in the bleachers. But tonight we might go for it.

Like Gwen Stefani says, ‘Something something, bleachers, something student teachers… This shit is bananas! B! A-N-A-N-A-S!’

Do I even mean bleachers? Or is that something else entirely?

Since the last update, 65daysofstatic:

- Got altitude sickness at Red Rocks.
- Got looked after by Fear Before the March of Flames.
- Heard their new demos which are AWESOME.
- Got drunk at Salt Lake City on hard liquor (Take that, mormons!)
- Played the Gorge festival in a canyon and enjoyed Tegan & Sara afterwards.
- Found sushi in Vancouver.
- Watched Indiana Jones and bought records in Portland.
- Tried to figure out what we’re gonna do with our lives after this tour in San Jose.
- Kissed the Pacific in Santa Barbara.

That about sums it up, I think. If you want to try and recreate an average day-in-the-life of 65daysofstatic on tour with The Cure, get some vodka, some bourbon, some ice, some energy drink, sun-burn yourself, sleep, and jump around like crazy for 30minutes every 48 hours or so and then go watch an incredible band for 3 hours. It’s suprisingly rewarding.

Rob just came to look for the video camera so he could make an episode of Most Haunted in the basement. I’m gonna go and get it for him.

We promised photos this time, didn’t we?
They’re coming. Honest.
65.x

is where we are, in KANSAS CITY BABY.

In Kansas City the sun shines all day and the trees grow muffins and sweets.

There’s a lake of gin we can both jump in, and the handouts grow on bushes!
In the new-mown hay we can sleep all day, and the bars all have free lunches !
Where the mail train stops and there ain’t no cops, and the folks are tender-hearted !
Where you never change your socks and you never throw rocks,
And your hair is never parted!

Etcetera.

The show tonight is outdoors in an amphitheatre. Cool. Think of the opposite of the Camden Barfly in every possible way, and that’s where we’re at.

Last night we were in St Louis, and we played a great bar called the 2 Cents Plain. In the state of Missouri on a Sunday it’s illegal to sell alcohol on Sunday unless you serve food as well. With this in mind, it’s remarkable how drunk we managed to get. So drunk in fact, we might have left a box with all our t-shirts in by the side road. Shit.

The night before that, we were in Chicago and we played two shows in one night, which was actually a lot of fun. Plus we got to drink two riders.

The night before that, we went to Niagara Falls, which is awesome, even at 1am in the morning. Rob went over in a barrel. No danger.

Shows in Montreal and Canada before that were a lot of fun, and had some of the nicest audiences so far on this tour. Thanks, Canada.

I went to the zoo today.

The day after tomorrow we’re going to Denver where there are scorpions and tarantulas, apparently.

Anyway, enough, here’s a recording of Fix The Sky A Little from The Chicago Allstate Arena, recorded by the excellent Brennan Houser. It’s free. Have it.

Next time, some photos.

65daysofstatic.x

Two shows in and it’s the day of the first 65daysofstatic headline show, in Hoboken. Whenever we tell people in America that, they say, ‘Yeah! The home of Frank Sinatra!’ and in my head I reply ‘But surely it’s more popular for being mentioned in the title of an incredible Yo La Tengo song?’ but don’t say it out loud because I don’t want to be proved wrong. It’s a really good song.

Frank Sinatra is excellent in The Manchurian Candidate, especially when he does some martial arts. On the other hand, he is also indirectly responsible for Ocean’s 12. Not to be trusted then.

Simon has broken an already impressive 65 record by breaking his brand new, fresh-out-the-box, $1600 Ampeg Bass Head after one show. ONE SHOW. We are driving round various Guitar Centers right now looking for a replacement. In the last one, Rob and Paul found some synths and became an admirable approximation of Daft Punk, Joe talked to a girl about delay pedals and tried out some kinda geeky guitar/fx combo and made a sound like all the dinosaurs that ever existed coming back to life at the same time. Simon, meanwhile, failed to get a new bass head of any description as the one they had in the store was ‘already’ broken. But none of us saw the amp prior to Si trying it out. Our plan in the next guitar shop (or store as they’re known over here) is to walk in and say ‘Hi, can you direct us to your broken amps section’.

The Guitar Center was next to a Chuck E Cheese. What’s a Chuck E Cheese? Chuck E Cheese is a giant mouse from space. Thumbs up.

Tonight we are playing with God Fires Man who are some members of Gay For Johnny Depp who we just finished touring with, so we’re hoping that they’ll help us out of this tightest of spots. (Last night, incidentally, the glorious Simon Gallup of The Cure came to our rescue with his spare amp. When Joe explained this to the crowd, the amp got a much bigger cheer than any of our songs did).

Everyone in American arenas has to sit down. This is an awful thing and I am suprised that there hasn’t been a revolution. It is because the venues/promoters can make more money selling seated space than standing space, apparently. Real shame…

So far, our soundchecks have been taken up mostly with fixing things and we’re playing on different gear to the stuff we normally use so if anyone saw us at any of these shows and thought we were shocking, that’s the story we’re sticking to.

Yesterday in Philidelphia there was a giant, rusting ship that looked like that bit in Ghostbusters 2 where the Ghost Ship Titanic pulls into port. And also a great little independent music store somewhere in Chinatown that sold me a power supply for a midi interface and the guy who helped me had heard of 65daysofstatic. Which was exciting. Joe’s looking tired.

Me: ‘Joe, why are you looking so tired?’
Joe: ‘I don’t know. Why?’
Me: ‘Is it cos you’re drinking too much?’
Rob: ‘It’s cos you’re drinking too much’.
Joe: ‘Fucking right’.

Arty from God Fires Man just called. They have an amp.
We’re winning.
Onwards…
65.x

Take a deep breath.
And carry on.

The Dance Parties tour (fueled by gin and hot sauce) was exhausting and spectacular in all the right ways. Thanks to you all for braving the confused spring time and stumbling show-wards. Thanks to Errors, Gay For Johnny Depp, Pilgrim Fathers & Dark Captain Light Captain for keeping us on our toes and finding adventures for us.

After the UK shows we did a quick-stop tour of the continent. In Paris we had to push our backline down a street that was too narrow to drive down and Holy Fuck opened for us, which makes little sense because they’re a lot more famous than us. And they were fucking great as well. Then there was Atlantis, Oceansize, Transit, Shutter providing the decibels… Our clumsy electronica made on broken computers held its own, our battered amps continued to make noise… We freaked out only once in Nottingham when everything stopped but made up for it by staying out late and drinking heavily…We danced to The Cure in a Leeds nightclub which breaks pretty much every rule in the 65 book…Done and done. We have a couple of festivals once we get home but the truth is summer dates are pretty thin on the ground. Nobody wants hard-to-catagorise-instrumental-almost-dance-music on their bills, it would seem.

Now we’re in America on our bus - home for the next seven weeks - which is nicer than any house we have ever lived in. There are mirrors on the roof and two televisions the size of the holes in the ozone layer we’re probably making every couple of minutes. What an extraordinary peril that paralyses our lifetimes, huh? Our driver is called Patrick and the stereo works and is playing American/New York-themed songs in honour of our arrival in the city that is too-cool-for-us. The 65daysofstatic Have Been Up For Hours & Need to Find Food & Alcohol Playlist is as follows:

1. Tom Petty - American Girl
2. LCD Soundsystem - North American Scum
3. RFTC - Born in ‘69
4. Lou Reed - NYC Man
5. Interpol - NYC
6. Jimi Hendrix - Crosstown Traffic
7. Jimmy Eat World - Bleed American
8. Johnny Cash - I Won’t Back Down
9. Billy Joel - New York State of Mind
10. Blood Brothers - USA Nails
11. Atombombpocketknife - America the Great
12. The Doors - Light My Fire
13. Elliot Smith - Sweet Adeline
14. Gay For Johnny Depp - Lights Out!
15. Leonard Cohen - Take This Waltz

Then we ran out of energy so now Patti Smith is playing.

This bus is supposed to have Wifi, because in this country you’re nobody if you can’t update your facebook status to ‘Is Spotting Sopranos Landmarks’ when you’re headed down the New Jersey Turnpike. Except right now it’s broken. So we’ll post this from the dressing room of the Patriot Center tomorrow, while we pick up our gear and see if it works and get freaked out about the size of the stages all over again.

Oh right - we’re in America because we are supporting The Cure on the American leg of their tour. The first show is tomorrow in Fairfax. We have also weaved our first ever headline tour into the fabric of this one on the days off (and sometimes the same day) which is equally exciting and should lead to all sorts of confusions. Below they are separated, for ease of understanding. If you colour (or color, seen as how we’re Americans now) the 65 headline shows in green and the Cure shows in red and then look at them through a pair of 3D glasses, then you will be disappointed when nothing cool happens.

See you on the road, Ameri-kids!
65.x

HEADLINE SHOWS:

May 2008
11th: Hoboken NJ, Maxwells
17th: Chicago IL, Subterranean
18th: St Louis MO, 2 Cents Plain
22nd: Englewood CO, The Falcon
23rd: E Center, Salt Lake City24th: Boise ID, The Venue

June 2008
2nd: Anaheim CA, Chain Reaction
4th: Phoenix AZ, Modified Arts
7th: San Antonio TX, Rock Bottom
8th: Austin TX, Emos
12th: Orlando FL, The Social
14th: Gainsville FL, The Atlantic
15th: Duluth GA, Gwinnett Civic & Cultural Center
19th: New York City NY, Mercury Lounge

CURE SUPPORT SHOWS:

May 2008
9th: Patriot Center, Washington DC
10th: Wachovia Spectrum, Philidelphia
12th: Agganis Arena, Boston
14th: Bell Centre, Montreal
15th: Air Canada Centre, Toronto
17th: Allstate Arena, Chicago
19th: Starlight Theatre, Kansas City
21st: Red Rocks Amphitheatre, Denver
25th: George WA, The Gorge Amphitheater (The Sasquatch Festival)
26th: General Motors Place, Vancouver
28th: San Jose CA, HP Pavillion
29th Santa Barbara Bowl, Santa Barbara
31st: Hollywood Bowl, Los Angeles

June 2008
1st: Shrine Auditorium, Los Angeles
3rd: Cox Arena, San Diego
4th: Dodge Theatre, Phoenix
6th: American Airlines Center, Dallas
8th: Austin Music Hall, Austin
9th: Toyota Center, Houston
11th: St Pete Times Forum, Tampa
13th: Bank Atlantic Center, Fort Lauderdale
15th: Gwinnett Center, Atlanta
16th: Charlotte Bobcats Arena, Charlotte
18th: Wolstein Center at Cleveland State University, Cleveland
20th: Madison Square Gardens, New York City
21st: Radio City Hall, New York City

Now.
Nostalgia is a dangerous thing. So let’s just say that touring with The Cure was an INCREDIBLE experience and thanks to them for making it happen, to the 65 fans who braved the arenas to come and shout their support in our direction and to the many, many Cure fans who had never heard of us but put up with our confused noises echoing around them. We’re looking forward to doing it all over again in America & Canada in a couple of months time.

Right now though, we are all about the brand new 65daysofstatic single. It’s coming out on the indefatigable Monotreme Records on the 7th April. You can stream it RIGHT NOW on that player above and remix it with your mouse right here: 65daysofstatic.com/danceparties. Make sure you check that out, it’s pretty cool. You can find the new single streaming on our myspace too if this website isn’t homogenised enough for ya. There are two A-Sides and both are based on ‘The Distant & Mechanised Glow of Eastern European Dance Parties’ but are major reworkings, as you can hear. Full tracklisting is as follows:

1. Dance Parties [Distant]
2. Dance Parties [Mechanised]
3. Goodbye, 2007
4. Antique Hyper Mall

You’ll be able to download ‘Goodbye, 2007′ from Monotreme’s website any day now to see what you’d be getting yourself into.
We are of course going out on our own tour in support of this release. We’ve confirmed some unfeasibly good support acts too - Gay For Johnny Depp, Errors & Pilgrim Fathers, plus Dark Captain Light Captain and another band to be confirmed for the London show. Once again we’re working hard on stepping up the live show, incorporating all kinds of newness into proceedings. The techno we’ve been dropping in the rehearsals makes us weep. Not sure if that’s a good or bad thing. Bring your dancing shoes in any case. Finally, we recently announced some Italian dates for this tour which we now have to reschedule. Apologies for this (it’s all about visas). We definitely want to do those shows so expect them later in the year. Dates:

APRIL
9th: Bristol Thekla – Gay for Johnny Depp & Pilgrim Fathers
10th: Nottingham Rescue Rooms – Errors & Gay For Johnny Depp
11th: London Indigo – Errors & Gay For Johnny Depp
12th: Leeds, Cockpit – Errors & Gay For Johnny Depp
13th: Brighton, Concorde 2 – Errors & Gay For Johnny Depp
14th: Wolverhampton, Wulfrun Hall - Errors & Gay For Johnny Depp
15th: Manchester, Academy 2 - Errors & Gay For Johnny Depp
16th: Portsmouth, Wedgewood Rooms – Gay For Johnny Depp & Pilgrim Fathers
17th: Paris, La Maroquinerie
18th: Harlam, Patronaat – with Oceansize support
20th: W2, Den Bosch
21st: Brussels, Botanique
27th: Inverness, Ironworks – Pilgrim Fathers
28th: Glasgow, King Tuts – Pilgrim Fathers

We can’t promise when you’ll see us next after these dates because we’re gonna have to go and write another album at some point. Just so ya know… Hope to see you on the road, 65 kids. xx

Howdy.

Right now we’re in Barcelona. We just soundchecked with massively out-of-tune guitars in a 17,000 capacity arena. Onstage in a little while, just got time to announce the support bands for our upcoming UK headline shows! Yeah!

Basically, it’s gonna be a mixture of Errors, Gay for Johnny Depp & Pilgrim Fathers. See below for who is where.  The London show is also include Dark Captain Light Captain and another band TBC. There’s also a few more European dates been confirmed and are below. Apologies if we’re not coming near you. Hopefully we’ll make it up to you with festivals in the summer time.

April 2008:

9^th: Bristol Thekla – Gay for Johnny Depp & Pilgrim Fathers
10^th: Nottingham Rescue Rooms – Errors & Gay For Johnny Depp
11^th: London Indigo – Errors & Gay For Johnny Depp
12^th: Leeds, Cockpit – Errors & Gay For Johnny Depp
13^th: Brighton, Concorde 2 – Errors & Gay For Johnny Depp
14^th: Wolverhampton, Wulfrun Hall - Errors & Gay For Johnny Depp
15^th: Manchester, Academy 2 - Errors & Gay For Johnny Depp
16^th: Portsmouth, Wedgewood Rooms – Gay For Johnny Depp & Pilgrim Fathers

17^th: Paris, La Maroquinerie
18^th: Harlam, Patronaat – with Oceansize support
20^th: W2, Den Bosch
21^st: Brussels, Botanique
23^rd: Rome, Circola delgi Artisti
24th: Modena, Mirandola
25^th: Bologna, Cova

27^th: Inverness, Ironworks – Pilgrim Fathers
28^th: Glasgow, King Tuts – Pilgrim Fathers

See you on the road.
65daysofstatic.x

We’re right now in a dressing room in Milan. The sound of The Cure’s soundcheck is echoing down the corridors toward us. How would you go about designing a building where if a band was soundchecking onstage at X bpm, then you could be sat in a dressing room where four corridors converge and it would be like the entire band was playing through a tape delay with four separate heads?

I guess at the very least you would need a degree in architecture, something which Simon doesn’t have because he DROPPED OUT to be in 65daysofstatic instead.

Simon is depicted on the Sistine Chapel with the word ‘booze’ underneath him. This is absolutely true. We know because we saw it yesterday. We also didn’t see the Pope because he has MAD CASH and didn’t grant us an audience with him even though Rob was wearing Bono sunglasses and Joe was tearing up condoms and speaking in tongues. That’s the problem with organised religion. Busy schedule.

We also saw the ruins of the Roman Empire that expanded too far too fast and collapsed into itself. There are probably several emo bands called ‘While Rome Burns’ in the world and maybe a couple of black metal albums called that too. Which is a shame, because it would be quite a nice metaphor for a lot of things. It’s where we’re all headed anyways…

Do you want to hear about our travels? Do you want to hear about our shows? Should we, as a band, be working harder to make a direct connection with you guys who are so kind as to listen to our music and visit this website? Or should we be trying harder to maintain an air of mystery about everything we do? Cling to the smoke & mirrors which make everything involved with being a band touring arenas across Europe seem cool? Even though it actually involves a lot of sitting around with laptops and washing in the mornings by pouring a bottle of water over your head?

You’ll have to tell us.

We are also, incidentally, getting more and more excited about our headline shows. We are THIS close (as in, the size of the word ‘THIS’) to finalising the supports and it’s gonna be sweet. Check the shows page for full details. You’ll be hearing our new single soon too cos the press will have got hold of it by now and you know how they like to leak things.
Speaking of leaking things, seen as you can get all of our stuff on the torrents for free, why on earth would you be willing to spend a hundred pounds or more on some of our old cds that someone’s selling on ebay? Please don’t. If you really, really want to waste that money, then give it to Amnesty International, tell us about it, and then we’ll let you be the singer in our band. Cos we don’t have a front man and if we wanna make it in this business we should probably get one.

Anyway. See you at the 65 shows in April, yeah?

65.x