this cat is a landmine

(Note: This post originally appeared on my blogspot blog here. Datestamped footnotes with commentary may have been added for my own reflection and amusement.)

I’m not really sure what “Post-Rock” means as a musical genre. According to Wikipedia as of tonight, it’s:

a music genre characterized by the use of musical instruments commonly associated with rock music (typically a line-up of two electric guitars, an electric bass guitar and a drum set), but utilizing rhythms, harmonies, melodies and chord progressions that are unorthodox in rock and roll.

65daysofstatic evidently fits into this genre, but labels like this always seem a little silly. Really, compared with other Post-Rock bands I’ve listened to they seem to be almost a part of their own genre. I’ve also heard them described as “Math Rock” which is even more bizarre, and seems to be a clever term for “uses atypical musical time signatures.”

When I first happened upon this band almost completely by accident, I was thrown off by the first noisy track of their first album The Fall of Math, but I left it playing based on really strong word of mouth from my favorite music forum, and from the second track on I was completely hooked.

I don’t listen to a whole lot of instrumental stuff, and before Kid A I really never listened to anything that was driven significantly by electronic music other than the occasional Prodigy song and the token soundtrack to The Matrix, both mostly when I was in high school. It may be because they’re conveniently located alphabetically speaking on my playlist, or because it’s great music to put on and get a lot of work done, but I listen to a significant amount of this band and get a surprising emotional pull out of it for instrumental music.

The off beat electronic drums have diminished slightly since their first album, but they’re still there and used to fantastic effect along with a lot of spooky / awesome atmospheric sounds. I’ve just now gotten around to listening to their new album that was released this year and it’s a fitting addition to the collection.

Despite the great music, probably my favorite thing about this band is the collection of wonderfully bizarre song titles that show up on their albums, like the one I used for the title of this blog, or “I swallowed hard, like I understood” (check it out on the linked myspace¹ page), “drove through ghosts to get here”, and “the conspiracy of seeds”.

This is a lot of words basically saying “Hey, check this band out!” I’ll even help, here’s an unofficial video for “radio protector” off their [second album][4]:

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• review