65DaysOfStatic Interview
Interview wit Paul Wolinski of 65DaysOfStatic
Words by Eric Cannon
65DaysOfStatic has been a name bobbing around me for ages now yet it’s one that for some reason has surpassed me unnoticed. During their recent tour of the UK I managed to catch them live, so as always I try to do my homework and a week before the London show I picked up a copy of Escape Of New York. Unbeknownst to me this was a record of a live show and being an avid CD collector I was a little despondent to say the least, I don’t do live albums. Nevertheless I decided to put my 12 quid to good use and at least give it a try, what happened next was something else and for the first time that week (it happens often) I felt like a complete nincompoop, yes a nincompoop, for not actually knowing these guys. There was so much hype a while back with the release of the new (now old) Prodigy album and the emergence of Enter Shikari and for the life of me I cant understand why this Sheffield mob hasn’t manifested into one of my many additions. As for the show I was spell bound, it was an experience out of this world, and on their way to Ireland Paul65DaysOfStatic took out some time out to answer some questions for Clink, this is what he had to say.
Your music is a great blend of dance and rock, neither one sits above the other, is that something you strive for?
Thanks. I’m not sure blending those two genres is what we strive for. In any case, there are whole worlds of music that sit under the banners of ‘dance’ and ‘rock’ and If we strive for anything, it’s to avoid genres all together. When we started, we didn’t set out with that calculated an agenda. We just wanted to find our own sound because we knew that all we really wanted to do was to be in a band. And to do that the best we could, we wanted to do something new and useful.
Is it hard to find a balance between the more rock/hardcore stuff and the programmed beats and synths?
No. We have very low centres of gravity. And heavy shoes.
Nice, I see what you did there. Why did you decide to be an instrumental band only?
We didn’t make a conscious decision to be an instrumental band. We just started making music, none of us could sing, it didn’t seem like such a big deal at the time. By the time it occurred to us, there didn’t really seem to be any space left for vocals in our songs. If there ever is, we do sometimes try and put some singing in there.
And do you think not having a singer restricts the band in any way?
Only in a commercial sense.
Yet you have done pretty damn well without one, Has the thought ever crossed your mind about placing a singer,or even adding some spoken word to your songs?
We have done a few songs in the past with singers and vocals, and I am sure that in the future there will be more. The only thing that makes us cautious is that we would always want to be able to recreate the songs live in one way or another. Relying to heavily on vocals from someone outside the band is always gonna make that harder to achieve.
A lot of musicians claim that it’s an amazing feeling having your songs sung back to you when playing live, do you feel with that in mind that you might be missing out a little.
You really want us to have a singer don’t you!?
Well I was kind of hoping you would offer it to me.
I don’t feel like we’re missing out on anything – we’re still in a band. We still get to play our music to people who are willing to listen. There’s plenty of dancing happening at our gigs, and plenty of smiles. We still feel like we’re able to interact with the crowd on plenty of different levels. Words are overrated anyway – there’s plenty of things that are too big and wide to fit into them. Some ideas fit better into sheets of really loud guitar noise.
Live shows are as much a visual experience as they are audio; in a live setting the spotlight is always on the front man, as you don’t have a singer who do you think the spotlight moves to?
Maybe we should hire Keith Flint. I guess the spotlight moves to Joe because he stands in the middle of the stage. He also has a microphone and speaks between the songs. Or maybe it’d move to Rob, cos he’s a well awesome drummer. He has a lot of moves. More likely, we’ll be playing in a venue too small to have spotlights.
From seeing you live I feel like it goes to Rob, visually he is very entertaining, you manage to get mosh pits going, do you get many people doing full on rave moves?
We’ve had some glowsticks – do they count? There’s been all kinds of dancing going on over these past few weeks. And Simon was working with a choreographer before the tour and has an excellent salsa routine during ‘Weak4′.
Has there been any comical moves you have seen thrown down?
The only comical moves come from stage. Laughing at people dancing is like going to a party, staying sober and then sitting in the kitchen thinking that you’re having more fun than the people throwing up in the garden. But secretly, we all wanna be throwing up in the garden.
