65daysofstatic, Club Quattro

by dan

The problem of post-rock music is that, while it is often capable of skyscraping beauty and real emotional punch, the quiet / loud, build and release, dynamic has become just too familiar. Mogwai or Explosions In The Sky may noodle along prettily, but everyone knows that the crescendo is coming. It’s a genre that’s backed itself into a corner, and nowadays waiting for the loud bits gets just plain boring (at least for this short attention span punk rocker).

65daysofstatic solve this conundrum by the simple expedient of playing nothing but loud bits, and their recent Shibuya show was one of the most exciting I’ve seen in the last few months. The rhythm section is based on live drumming working in tandem with glitchy offcentre beats from a laptop, which also provides a hefty dollop of sub-bass. The guitarists get busy on top of that, and keyboard washes and melodies float above all the thrashing stuff down in the midrange. It’s very complicated, very technical music, but nothing like as dry and chinstroking as that sounds. It’s a manic, shifting thing, where the usual ebbs and flows of post-rock are speeded up and compressed into bursts of skittering, juddering energy. For all that I’m trying to describe it in words here, the real impact is overwhelmingly visceral.
And wow, is it loud.