devblog / friday 290722 (Patreon)

Hi there, friends.

It's time for another update from the hauntingly quiet 65LABS. We're typing through inches of dust, the muffled clack of this lonely mechanical keyboard echoing around the concrete walls in 7/8 time. Digital tundra brushes our ankles. The prevailing winds coming off of the drone mountains is making the windows shudder.

Patreon, always eager for us to take your money, reactivates this subscription every month. And so at the end of each month, during our current hiatus, with heavy but noble hearts we press down on the 'pause subscription' button to make sure you don't get charged, then sit down to write you our monthly dispatch.

Every time we post during this break, both here and on the 65 Discord we get a bunch of nice messages from people saying that they'd be happy to keep supporting 65days on a monthly basis for just generally existing here on a loose basis, even if we are not existing at the speed of Wreckage Systems Season One. This is very kind, and perhaps there is some scope for something like that in the future. The experiment called 65daysofstatic continues to weather all storms, and there are many things we still want to do.

At the same time though, apart from the more material, tangible catastrophes that are hurtling toward all of us, here in the more ephemeral domain of art and (internet) culture, it seems like the struggle this specific 65LABS project has blundered into is maintaining some kind of distinction between 'content' and, for want of a better phrase, 'art'.

Music is very much a temporal artform. Not only because it can literally only manifest through time, but also because, as we said right back at the start in the Wreckage Systems FAQ, music in the shape of songs and albums can exist alongside you over long periods of time. Liftetimes, even. They can become your own personal soundtrack. They can evolve with you, take on different characteristics. You can fall in and out of love with songs and albums in so many different ways over the years.

Sure, the cycle of bands putting out albums every 3/4 years mostly likely came about largely because of commercial concerns. In the olden days, you made a record, promoted a record, stretched out awareness of it with a bunch of singles and then toured it for as long as you possibly could.

Just because this cycle was forged through capitalism doesn't invalidate it. Pretty much all the ways we understand/listen to/dance to/cry to/sing along with music exist in and through capitalism. Because everything else about our lives does too. Unfortunately.

And so music that is made in the shape of songs and albums has been designed through a massively complex web of social relations and commerical viability over the last century-ish to work most effectively this way. As intermittent, focussed slices of noise, dropped like buoys into the ocean of history. Here at 65LABS we think that it is GOOD that your favourite band doesn't release a new album every month. It is GOOD that you get to spend sometimes years sinking into the same 45minutes of audio over and over and over again. And this luxuriating in temporality is exactly what the Infernal Churn of Internet Content (ICIC) hopes to dissolve. The production of ICIC is the fuel for new revenue streams, for monetising everything, for cross-market synergy, for alienating artists from their work under the guise of worker controlled production, for ceding all space for art to exist except for being hosted on half a dozen digital platforms. The ICIC is the enemy, and because of it making things slowly increasingly becomes a privilege.

All this is a long way of saying that the search for the right formula for a Wreckage Systems Seasons Two continues. Because, y'know, the Wreckage Systems V2 stream is built now and is STILL HAPPENING. And even though it might sound great in theory, endless bandcamp 65daysofstatic releases every month or two would not end well for any of us.

And so, for now, and until we figure out what's next, the subscription remains paused.

Once again, in the meantime there's been a few new subscribers and that's really great. Happy to have you here, and please do stick around! Although it's quiet you're not getting charged apart at the moment apart from the initial pledge when you signed up. And in return for that, there's plenty tucked away in the Patreon archive that is worth investigating.

There'll be more from 65 just as soon as we have it to give. Until then: FUCK THE TORIES! Fuck Keir Starmer too (clearly also a tory, just a particularly confused and mediocre one), fuck the energy companies, fuck the billionaires, especially ones who build tunnels. Corporate profits are wage theft, big up the unions, and solidarity to everyone on the picket lines!

Good luck out there, friends. It's getting wild.

65 Comms Team
NOISE SILO 4F
SYNTH MEADOWS
65LABS EASTERN QUADRANT