Toonsday Tuesday in Tunesville ... and Bless You

[Davey]

Had a couple of distracted listens to BSP's newest, and one more focused listen and I like what I've heard so far.

"Atom" is my current fixation. Love that song. Played it two or three times on the way home from work last night. My car changer has been kind of stuck on that early Three Mile Pilot "Chief Assassin to the Sinister" for so long, especially the amazing "Midgaard Serpent", that I play over and over at high levels like a teenage idiot, singing the changing "shalom, feed the fire" refrain, so it's nice to have a new car distraction, though like most modern recordings (at least on CD) the BSP recording doesn't hold together very well at high volumes.

Also been listening some to the latest from Six By Seven, very much in a Spiritualized vein. Made nicer because they have responded to the idiotic modern mastering practices by making a record that is intentionally mastered quieter, with some dynamics left, and even talk about it at their site. The band 65daysofstatic made a very cool record last year called "The Destruction of Small Ideas" that I also just got and love, but they recorded it in that same "vintage" style, preserving much of the nuances in the music that has been lost in modern times. Quiet and dynamic, real instruments, real players, just like real music. Still has the electronic effects and found sounds like in most instrumental post-rock, but humanized, this is a pretty special one, the one where they found themselves as a band, and a big part of that was the realization that loud mastering with no dynamic range is wrecking music. Still hope, I guess. Of course, they released it on double gatefold vinyl too, but I haven't heard that ... yet



from their Rough Trade label site ...

65DAYSOFSTATIC
the destruction of small ideas

as the album title might suggest, 65daysofstaic are not afraid to aim high - with their previous two studio albums grandly realised journeys into the post-rock night sky that look to mogwai, autechre and steve reich for inspiration as electronic elements are incorporated into the mix for added texture. harking from the seven hills of sheffield, 65daysofstaic prove that there's more to the city of steel than arctic monkey wannabes, with 'the destruction of small things' further enhancing their claim to wall-of-guitar grandeur and scarred sky solipsism. opening with 'when we were younger & better', 65daysofstatic don't sound unlike muse at their most unbridled - albeit washed clean of the faux-yorke wailing and replaced with some truly thundering rhythms that propel the whole composition down the asphalt at break-neck speed. able to do the whole 'quiet-loud-pretty-loud' thing whilst avoiding the numerous clichés that often blight such excursions, 65daysofstatic take their music very seriously and throughout 'the destruction of small ideas' you're well aware of the accomplished individuals who are raising sonic hell. moving on, the next post-rock enema comes via 'failsafe' and its clever use of rhythm and piano interludes - with the whole thing flailing around in a digital straight-jacket that finally breaks to unleash a tsunami of sound. elsewhere, 'wax futures' matches a skittering electronic beat to broiling riffs, 'music is music...' introduces the notion of classical elements through some baroque flourishes, whilst 'these things you can't unlearn' will take your head off through sheer sonic might after its tender introduction. closing with the 'the conspiracy of seeds', 65daysofstatic hint at possible things to come - incorporating strepsil vocals and a sweet female voice to balance the ruptured rock universe spewing forth behind.

in their own words: we tried to make it in a way that would retain it's dynamic and make it listenable at many different volumes, like records used to be made before it became fashionable to compress the fuck out of them, until they're so loud they sound like a brick wall, but can capture the attention of the average radio listener faced with hours and hours of rubbish, by being that much louder than everything else. instead we made this so the quiet bits are quiet and the loud bits are loud, and if you turn it up on your stereo you can hear everything in it's own place. couldn't have said it better myself.