Review: 65daysofstatic

Having missed ‘65daysofstatic’ at Reading festival last year, I literally jumped at the chance to see them play at The Junction.  The instrumental post-rock/electronica band has been around for some time now; their fourth album ‘We Were Exploding Anyway’ released last month.  The new album is well worth a listen, but I wanted to see whether their strong electronic sounds and crushing guitar chords can be successfully transferred to stage.  

At least one of the support acts, 'Nedry' deserves a mention – an absolutely brilliant band.  At the start of their set, their sound was the atmospheric background music found in cool London bars, quite like Bjork and Fever Ray, but then they introduced dubstep and guitar riffs similar to that of the Klaxons (in a good way).  A continual electronic noise, the crowd responded well and I look forward to their future success.  

Then the second support act, who goes by the name of ‘Loops Haunt’, immediately captured my attention with ‘A Clockwork Orange’ soundtrack, but that collapsed into noises found on the game Bop It.  He has potential, but his set was self-indulgent, and reminded me of the less-than-average May Ball DJ.  A couple were grinding, how I don’t know.  Just looked plain awkward.        

65days brought it back, and I felt bad for momentarily doubting their abilities.  They opened up with raw heavy rock of epic proportions and then progressed into more high energy music with undertones of electronica.  Retaining that energy, the band then burst into dancier tracks, but still keeping that heavy rock element.  A little similar to some of the tracks found on ‘Invaders Must Die’ by The Prodigy, 65days definitely got the crowd moving with ‘Dance Dance Dance’ and ‘Crash Tactics’. 

In a chilled electronic interlude I had a look around at one of the weirdest audiences I’ve experienced – hardly any teenagers, a couple of old bikers, that guy that was eating pork pies during the set, that annoying fuck with flailing arms dancing manically to the chill-out section, and then that spaced out guy who didn’t blink, the only time he moved was to clap at the end.  Oh to have been inside his head for the evening. 

65days ended their set on a dance track, leaving the crowd absolutely wild.  The highlights of the evening for me were ‘Tiger Girl’, which was like being transported to an electronic Brazilian festival with all those samba beats going on, and also ‘Piano Fights’, with its simple child’s piano tune that explodes into just pure wonder (see new album).      

I would have given the gig 4 ½ stars but strangely the encore ruined it slightly.  Opposed to their tight set beforehand it was loose and went on for too long.  Energy was wavering and then, sort of fizzled out.