Wild Light Decade #12: ENTROPICANA (Patreon)

Got a big one for you all this week. It’s called Entropicana. A lost gem of an almost-track which, in some ways, is quite unlike anything we wrote before.

Whenever somebody bumps into any member of 65daysofstatic, perhaps walking down the street or maybe in a luxury guitar shop, the first word that comes to that somebody’s mind is always the same: joyous. That’s right: the four core members of 65days carry inside them a joy, a happiness, a sense of peace with the world so profound that it is impossible not to be affected by it. They exude calm, offer friendly smiles, a reassuring word in your ear, a well-balanced disposition… They are absolutely fully formed, well-rounded human beings. There is definitely no dread, no awkwardness… definitely no habit of turning every conversation into reasons why capitalism needs to be destroyed. People are never left with a sense that society in general is close to collapse, that the world is going to end, that they should politely try to exit this conversation as soon as possible. Why are you even questioning this? What would lead you to think otherwise??

And so for the longest time it has been a constant curiosity as to why the musical output of 65daysofstatic does not reflect more of this innate joy. Sure, there’s the occasional flashes of bittersweet melancholy in those sweeping 65 vistas of sonic abandon that you could call ‘a bit hopeful’ if you’re feeling generous. Wild Light itself has got that resolve to the D in The Undertow which is quite unsad, and the shift from C to Amin in Safe Passage has got a tinge of ‘oh but wouldn’t it be good if actually things did turn out ok after all?’ And Taipei has got that previously discussed sound of volcanoes erupting but instead of spewing lava they are spewing more volcanos that are also erupting. A reasonably positive sentiment. But where is the unadulterated, unfiltered, utopian joy, 65?

Enter: Entropicana. The best and also worst named song in the entirety of this Wild Light Decade project. If you ever wanted to know what 65 accidentally writing a happy song sounds like, this is it.

There were definitely quite a few different arrangements of this knocking about, but for some reason this is the only recording we have. At a cool seven minutes, this is another one of those generous, exploratory arrangements. Luxuriating in length to see what works and what gets boring. Every new element introduced gets its own cycle of the phrase. If a song gets this far in our writing process, the next step is usually to start shaving it down to a tighter edit. Staggering and combining elements so everything moves faster. Not because faster necessarily equals better, but more like removing the dead weight. Making it efficient and intentional. (Intentional can totally mean 20 minute long songs, but usually for us it means getting to the big ending as quickly as is reasonably possible).

There was definitely another version of this song that begins with the section that you can hear from around 02:24 in this recording. Drums followed by that gorgeous, slow, bendy noise melody for an achingly-long time until it explodes at the end.

If any of you on the radical left are listening to this and feeling like it is somehow familiar, it is probably because a few years ago, by happy accident, we ended up putting together a bunch of sound design, stings and music for Novara Media. We were incredibly flattered to be able to contribute to their project, which we continue to support wholeheartedly. Despite us writing various bespoke pieces, for whatever reason they decided to use an excerpt from our song Zero, In Zero (off Kazimir from our A Year of Wreckage project) for the theme to their flagship Novara Live show (previously known as Tyskey Sour). You can occasionally hear the bespoke pieces in the background of Novara podcasts, Novara FM and maybe other places. Additionally, there are various shorter stings for their idents and some of those stings were crafted from Entropicana. Really harnessing that whole UTOPIA NOW! energy. And here’s a secret for the biggest 65days nerds: the ident music that now closes the Novara Live show (heard HERE) is actually based on a slowed down version of the melody from Nines, another track from A Year of Wreckage (the Ptolyweirds e.p).

All of this is to say: please support independent radical left media. And thank you very much for already supporting this independent radical left pop band. Please send us photos of your bougie Entropicana dinner parties using the hashtag #entropicanapés. But only on our instagram not on twitter because we don’t really look at that these days. Not that we look at our instagram either really, but we try.

That’s all for this week. More photos when we find some good ones, there’s only so many versions of us sitting around in chairs looking confused and/or serious we can cope with.

Bye for now!

65.