With the announcement today that 65daysofstatic will be headlining the Thursday night at ArcTanGent festival, Paul Wolinski kindly gave us a bit of his time (in a busy week recording) for a catch up to find out what they’re up to and to find out a bit more about their return to ArcTanGent.
Hello, how’s the new year treating you all?
We’ve spent almost all of it so far in a studio that feels a lot like The Overlook Hotel working on a soundtrack for a computer game called No Man’s Sky.
How did you end up working with Hello Games to work on the soundtrack?
They got in touch with us about a year ago asking if they could use our song Debutante as the soundtrack to their announcement trailer for No Man’s Sky. They sent us some images, it looked beautiful, we got chatting and realised we had a lot in common and that this would be a wonderful project to collaborate on.
How different have you found producing music for a game compared to writing music for live performances and recordings?
Remains to be seen. We’re in the thick of it right now. It’s not the time for articulate reflection. Equally taxing while at the same time still being the best job in the world.
It’s good to see you announced to return to ArcTanGent this year, how did you find headlining two years ago?
It was cool. Always nice to see indie festivals thrive although to be honest it feels a bit too soon for us to be headed back. The last thing we wanna do is be seen as figure heads for a scene that shouldn’t be a scene, you know? Aren’t we all beyond scenes now? If underground, alternative music is to stay exciting and useful it should be more rhizomatic and less like ivy. (This is actually a great plant metaphor if I do say so myself). More horizontal and wide-reaching; less vertically-stacked similar bands billed in order of relative fame. For example, it’d be a joy to be playing on a stage where we are the only instrumental guys-with-guitars-and-some-electronics band playing, you know? I’m not suggesting that we get to have a monopoly on that kind of sound or anything but, y’know. There’s loads of really exciting stuff happening that doesn’t fit onto a festival template as easily as bands like us and it’d be good to see that kind of thing implemented somehow. And if not at festivals like ArcTangent, then where? I’m looking forward to the how-to-build-your-own-mesh-wifi-network-for-a-fiver-so-we-can-all-collaborate-across-the-festival-site-to-make-generative-techno-for-the-dance-tent-style workshops at ArcTangent 2016.
Do you have any memorable experiences from the festival?
Rolo Tomassi were reliably good. Our set featured twice as many lights as the stage had room for, plus we played some Wild Light material for the first time.
I appreciate that it’s far into the future currently but do you think your recent work on No Man’s Sky is likely to feature in your festival setlists?
Dunno.
What else can we expect from 65daysofstatic in 2015?
Off to Australia and Russia in March. Not had time to figure out what’ll happen after that yet.
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