They’re back! After a few years away touring the world, befriending and playing arenas with some of the big guns like the Cure, one of the most important bands that have come from this country in the last few years can finally grace us with the first release of new material since 2007’s Destruction Of Small Ideas. So what’s changed? Well a lot actually, a new label, new promoters and with that comes a whole new and exciting sound. Much more refined, more polished and much more focused on the electronics rather than any Post Rock hang ups of the past. Three years can be a long time for bands like 65dos with so many falling into that trap and releasing something that’s not quite up to standard but 65days, the band who don’t ever seem to stop working have taken this time to push their instantly recognisable sound to new limits opening up new possibilities and basically do what they’ve done since the beginning, offer the listener a chance to hear music that they literally wouldn’t hear anywhere else because no one else does it like these guys.
My one concern with the last album, although it contained a number of absolute classics was that it was very raw, almost scatty in places but with so much care and attention taken on this one, more of a focus on electronics and sheer volume ‘We Were Exploding Anyway’ leaves a lot of the distorted guitar riff driven songs such as ‘I swallowed hard, like I understood’ behind and in it’s place, pounding electric beats and samples more akin to popular dance such as Pendulum and Prodigy than any of the post rock predecessors that they might have been compared to before, but what’s so clever about their new approach is the way they can blend these simple, yet effective big beats with their own unique style creating an album that will no doubt appeal to a whole new audience but yet still retain so much quality that the die hard fanbase (and believe me, they have a very hardcore selection of devoted followers) will still find it hard not to fall completely in love with this album.
Opener ‘Mountainhead’ is a perfect way to introduce the listener to the new 65daysofstatic, huge bass heavy beats, simple keyboard work building into an orchestrated, epic finish. Dance Dance Dance is the first real showcase of their new exploration in sound with a huge tribal style breakdown of drums and bass and ‘Go Complex’ despite sounding more like a drum n bass floor filler it fits in really well with the rest of the album but it’s the 8 minute epic ‘Come To Me’ that completely blows me away every time I listen, easing the listener in with a haze of synth fuzz, xylophone and piano before breaking down with samples of Mr Robert Smith himself looping around pummelling drums and guitar. The album finishes on Tiger Girl, a sheer intense ten minute number built around a simple driven bassy beat building up with fuzzed up synths and glitches sounding a little like a 65days/ Fuck Buttons crossover.
65days already have a reputation as one of the most exhilarating live bands in the country at the moment but this album will take them to a whole new level. From the production through to the artwork this is their best album by far.
Head to one of their may shows if nothing else watch a bunch of unsuspecting indie kids shit themselves.
Crash Tactics
Words : Gordon Reid
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