Oh My Days: A Dystopic Peek at the Future With 65DOS
Let’s do a light, frothy interview with Sheffield post-rock four piece 65daysofstatic, we said to ourselves. We could chat about what they like about their home city, why they denounced the thorny moniker of math rockers, why their album titles are so strange (We Were Exploding Anyway, The Fall of Math) and what they think of Sean Bean. But 65DOS don’t do light and frothy.
Who’s the quickest in the band?
In the imperceptible backlog of thoughts, the Hoover Dam of dreams, the weight of water pushing at steel cliffs that plummet suddenly into the realm of the web host of the soul, we nightly dance and run across the cosmos, quicker than we ever could imagine.
Did you think the band would still be going after ten years?
65 is like AA. One day at a time.
Is your music static?
No. That would be like the opposite of the sound of infinity. Imagine that.
Would you turn on the Sheffield Christmas lights if asked?
Is there possibly an untapped market for turning the lights off? Y’know, ten or 15 single fathers stood round in the rain, smelling of stale beer and maybe weeping unconsolably into a cheese pasty? The weather drips down off the hills onto a barely populated high street, half the shops empty and boarded up. A group of workmen walk past in the background shielding their cigarettes from the wind, a stray dog curls round a lamppost like a question mark. A homeless man peers suspiciously from his doorway across the street. The rain strengthens imperceptibly as the members of 65daysofstatic, cheap shoes and damp feet, last season’s coats from the bargain rail, holloweyed and triumphant, power down the Christmas lights under the watchful eye of a wheezing and corrupt city councilor who narrowly escaped that charge last year and looks like he’s had one too many cooked breakfasts.
Could you take noted Sheffield hardman Sean Bean in a scrap?
“Hatred will not cease by hatred, but by love alone.”
“Abandon the will to fight.”
“65DOS are lovers not fighters” –Buddha.
Sean Bean takes Hendo’s (a popular Sheffield sandwich relish) everywhere he goes. What do you bring when you’re away for a period?
Clean clothes. Toothbrush. Each other.
What were you doing that was interrupted by exploding?
Rehearsing, probably. A whole bunch of stuff has blown up before our very eyes, over the years. Only last week we reduced a PA system to smoke and the smell of burnt plastic.
Math fell, but what caused its decline?
That moment in 2044 when the arms race between encryption and surveillance reaches breaking point. The computing power on either side of the fight is so phenomenally large that a particularly aggressive graphics card overheats, rips open the fabric of the universe and the number “5” falls through it into another dimension. After that, everyone’s f**ked.
How is math rock doing nowadays?
I have no idea. Right now I’m listening to Borodin. I’m no kind of expert.
What did you do with the extra funds raised from the Silent Running coffers?
Well, Silent Running pretty much broke even. With the increased donations we received, we actually made more vinyl – in fact, doubled our order, kind of extended the whole project. I think the leftover money was used to pay the rent on our rehearsal room. And our tax bill. We pay taxes, unlike many large corporations in the UK, who are friends with the government, even though we can barely scrape together a living wage. What’s that about?
What was the oddest request from a Silent Running donor?
We don’t take requests.
See 65DOS at Yugong Yishan on Jan 13.
This article originally appeared on page 54 of the January issue of the Beijinger.
Photo courtesy of the organizers
