Interview 65daysofstatic: Less Glitchy

To start with, how have things been going on tour?

We’ve really been enjoying ourselves. We’ve been on tour for pretty much the last five-and-a-half weeks, and we think that the reaction to the new songs in particular has been amazing.

How do you reckon the supports have been received?

Quite well. Nedry and Loops Haunt [who have been the two main supports for the majority of the tour] are entirely different from us, sound-wise - it helps if people come to our gigs with an open mind. We’re bringing Kong along with us for the Irish gig [Dublin, May 15th]. Their music is really aggressive and abrasive.

Open-mindedness at a 65 gig definitely helps, I’ll say that much. So, the new album, ‘We Were Exploding Anyway‘. What would be your favourite song from it, and why?

That’s a hard one to answer actually. If I had to make a decision, it would be ‘Tiger Girl’ (the last one). It was the last song we did for the record, and it’s different to everything else on there - there are lots of drums involved. When we wrote it, we were thinking ‘how do we make a song that’s the most fun one of ours to play live?’, and that’s why we’re closing the shows on this tour with it. It’s a song people can really get into. Dance to, even.

The album itself: in terms of being able to pull it off live, how’d you say it compares to, say, songs off ‘The Destruction of Small Ideas‘?

I’m really proud of ‘The Destruction of Small Ideas’, but we wrote it as a studio record (using grand pianos and stuff like that), and it’s always come across differently when we play it live. The songs speed up and slow down quite a lot, and trying to set a drummer’s metronome to that is difficult. The new songs are a bit more straightforward.

You took a much more electronic approach to writing songs than before. How different was that for you? It comes across as a big change on record.

Well, the album’s a lot less glitchy than our older stuff was. We’re not trying to hide behind glitchy beats and weird time signatures as much any more - we’re more confident than that now, going for simple rhythms. 4/4, four-to-the-floor beats, and so on. When we started out as a band, it was all much more programmed. I didn’t play guitar at all, for a start. Nor did we have a drummer.

Are you hoping to be out on the road as much as usual? 65 are well known for being a band that love to play live after all.

Personally, I’d love to be on tour all the time - with a day to rest my ears every now and then. There are festival bits coming up after we get off this one, and then there’s something happening later in the year that I can’t talk about right now but is going to be… different. We have songs left over from the record that we’re planning to put out somehow - single, EP… we don’t know yet, but it’ll give us an excuse to play live again!

Last but not least, can we expect any surprises at the gigs? Any older songs being resurrected, for instance?

Yes; while we’re playing most of the new album (except the track with vocals [‘Come To Me’], which we can’t do), there are definitely going to be some older songs brought out.

Would you be going as far back as [2003 debut EP] ‘stumble.stop,repeat’?

Well, we do play ‘AOD’. We also had a go at ‘play.nice.kids’ but I don’t think that turned out too well!

I see. I reckon that’s a wrap then; thanks for your time.

You too. Have a good day.