Wild Light Decade #18: AntiGravity (Patreon)

Something a bit different this week, explained in a way that hopefully makes sense to all the non-musicians out there…

As mentioned in an earlier post, reviving decade-old music projects is not as simple as just opening a file. Whatever DAW (digital audio workstation) you use, the chances are that a song project won't be a single file, but rather it will be made up of various moving parts. There will be the project file itself, but while this sits on your computer in the same way a text file or jpeg or mp3 would, this file usually doesn’t contain any actual audio. More likely, it is some kind of database that pulls together lots of disparate other files and then presents them to you in a useful manner inside the DAW user interface. So in addition to this main file, somewhere there will be all of the separate raw audio file files, one for each recording you have made. And then there are usually extra metadata files that take care of things like keeping track of all the ways you have non-destructively edited that audio within the project, or which take of what guitar you actually want to use, and so on.

A decent DAW will probably save all these various files within a sensible folder structure, which is better than nothing. But it cannot do much about any third party plugins you might be using in a song. DAWs will usually come with some built-in instruments and effects, but there’s a huge ecosystem of third party virtual instruments, samplers, and studio effects that don’t work as standalone pieces of software, but can only be accessed via the DAW. They don’t exist inside the DAW exactly, they have their own thing going on. And so as far as the DAW is concerned, it is your responsibility to make sure the right plugins exist on your system. If they’re not, the DAW will simply shrug and load the project with gaps where those plugins are supposed to be. If you’re lucky it might present you with a list of what is missing.

This brings us to AntiGravity. Back in 2013, the DAW of choice at 65HQ was Logic Pro. After this album, and due to our habit of trying to practice brand-disloyalty wherever possible, we started using Logic Pro less and Ableton Live more. We also, slowly but surely, stopped relying on the wide and buggy selection of pirated third party plugins we’d gathered from various torrent sites over the years. This was because, unsurprisingly, pirated stuff would always become increasingly prone to various problems as computer operating systems kept getting updated. Plus after a while, we started to realise that carrying around this huge range of different software instruments didn’t translate very well into live performances. Better to have less, more carefully chosen and adaptable instruments that don’t crash the computers quite as much. Plus you know, pirating software was a vital means to an end for 65daysofstatic in the beginning and that's fine, but it feels good to these days be able to support the developers of all the weird software tools we use to make noise with.

The point of all of this is - ten years after abandoning it, when we opened AntiGravity in the latest version of Logic Pro on our computer, hardly anything worked. The piano MIDI was there, but there was no piano instrument to play it. And the raw audio files were there, but all of the EQs, compressions, and so on were missing. And so we almost just closed the project forever and moved on.

But! Just before we did, out of curiosity, we dropped the current 65 piano plugin into the place of the missing old piano and hit play. Immediately we were struck by that tantilising piano melody. That pretty refrain that pushes into a dangerous liminal space between ‘sounds like quality 65daysofstatic’ and ‘sounds like an uplifting TV ad for HSBC’.

And so we dutifully went through the project, found all the missing plugins, and replaced them for the modern equivalents currently in rotation at 65HQ so we could hear what it was we decided to abandon. We didn’t do any extra mixing or arranging. The heart of the track is as-it-was in 2013. Just heard through some slightly different ones and zeroes.

Why did we abandon it? Who knows! It's pretty good! If we were a savvier band, we probably wouldn't share it with you all now and would throw it onto the pile of new sketches for whatever we try to make next. In fact, maybe listen to this once and then forget you ever heard it, just in case that's precisely what we end up doing.

Ok, that's it for this week. Other business...

If you haven’t bought any of our tour merch and would like to - today is Bandcamp Friday so it would be a perfect time for you to get round to it! And remember, your 20% discount code is ‘merchbot3000’.

If you already have all the 65 goods you need but want to share the Bandcamp Friday wealth, you can check out these various 65 side projects:

• Simon: NVLL 
• Rob: Haus Horo 
• Paul: Polinski 

(The 65 discount code won't work on those other stores though.)

Also, Bandcamp just got sold by one dumb company and then bought by some other dumb company who look like they are about to get into a fight with Bandcamp's union about whether or not they're going to sack loads of people as soon as they take over. So who knows how long it's gonna be before yet another music platform succumbs to the ongoing enshittification of the internet. It is going to be another heavy blow to 65's increasingly unlikely quest to be the biggest band of modern times if we can no longer host our music on there in good conscience. So good luck, Bandcamp union...

There's not long left of this Wild Light Decade project. We had a rough outline of everything we wanted to share week by week from the outset, but to be honest it’s been a lot more satisfying winging it, and now it’s not immediately clear what’s left. We shall see.

Until next week…

65x