Wild Light Decade #22: Prototype Album Tracklist V3 (Patreon)

How's it going out there, friends?

Here at 65LABS, we are busy pulling this sprawling Wild Light Decade project to a neat and tidy end. We need to empty out the 65LABS Nostalgia Investigations Space so the cleaning crew can come in and give it a deep noise cleanse. We have to be careful around these Nostalgia Spaces. They're so cosy. Don't want to get too comfortable in here, you know?

So we've been dumping the old hard drives in bath tubs full of magnets. Shredding the guitars, burying the drums in various local forests. We made a mountain of MIDI cables and then set it on fire.

This week's drop is a big one. Wild Light Prototype Album Tracklist #3 is a very specific slice of time in the writing of this record.

As previously mentioned, we have never been the kind of band who had the budget to go to a proper recording studio purely to write new music. This is because the second 65 enters one, we start bleeding money. Every second counts. It's becomes a delicate negotiation between dead-eyed project management pragmatism and noise-drenched artistic idealism in which we have to argue both sides simultaneously. All the things must be recorded no matter what - leaving without enough material to actually release a record is not an option. But also, we have learned that as much exploratory time as possible has to be carved out for the kind of sonic accidents and happenings that can only manifest in a studio environment. And similarly, enough space has to be left in our vision of a record to either incorporate any of those successful accidents, whilst making sure we can fill that space in already-prepared ways if all the accidents turn out to be of the rubbish kind.

Wild Light Prototype Album Tracklist #3 is a snapshot of where we were at right before going to Chapel Studios to record Wild Light for real. This is the album we thought we were making, with enough wiggle room in the hope we'd still be able to improve on it. These are the final states of all the songs after the various 65HQ, 2Fly, and Laundry Room writing and demoing sessions. Tracklist looks like this:

• 1. Intro
• 2. Sirens
• 3. Prisms
• 4. Blackspots
• 5. Artismal
• 6. The Undertow
• 7. Tunnels
• 8. Taipei
• 9. Safe Passage

It is pretty close to the final album, apart from including Artismal, not featuring Sleepwalk City, and having an extended introduction soundscape. Sleepwalk City was the big in-studio breakthrough. That song coming together changed the tone of the whole album, became a kind of centerpiece, and shunted Artismal into bonus-track status. Not because Artismal wasn't good enough, but because it suddenly become clear that Wild Light wasn't quite the record we thought it was going to be.

We thought we'd have a lot to say about this particular drop, but now it comes to it, at the end of however many months we've been running Wild Light Decade, most of the things have already been said. But that's okay - as a listening experience this recording still holds the attention, still offers glimpses of ideas we still hadn't fully realised.

Also it is worth pointing out that although you might have heard very similar prototype versions of some of these songs over the course of Wild Light Decade, this recording really does come from the original 'Prototype_album_tracklist_v3' mp3, where all the demos were all still very much in flux and subject to endless tweaking. So technically, you won't have heard any of this before.

The audio embed at the top of this post is a single mp3. but we have also attached a zip with all the separate songs at the bottom. Sorting out Bandcamp codes for this are a hassle, both logistically and probably (?) legally with this particular material. But if enough of you comment below requesting them we will see what we can do (subject to what word comes back up from the 65LABS Lawyer Abyss.)

Enjoy the noise, Wreckage Comrades.

See you next week.

65.x

P.S. - Just in case you missed it earlier, there's a new record out today from Paul out of 65daysofstatic, that band you like. It's called 'BLOOD - Original Score'. Check it out HERE if you like.