It all adds up for math rockers 65daysofstatic
Math rockers 65daysofstatic have evolved a sound and an independent spirit that keeps them free of mainstream industry conventions
They don't sing and they don't dance, yet they love Girls Aloud; they are punk and reject rock orthodoxy, yet they have been labelled as progressive rock; and, while their live performances can gallop along at heart attack-inducing speed, their songs can last anything up to 10 minutes.
For British band 65daysofstatic, concepts such as genre and style have little currency. They have been called everything from post-rock to math rock to new progressive, but no label has ever really captured the band's essence, according to multi-instrumentalist co-founder Joe Shrewsbury. Even he has trouble describing the collective that has taken up his creative talents since the group's creation 13 years ago.
"We're a pretty strange and radio-unfriendly band," he admits, speaking from their rehearsal studio in Sheffield, the northern English industrial city that has been the group's base since the three original members - the other two are Paul Wolinski and Iain Armstrong - met in late 1999. "But we've stuck with it."
The one thing that definitely can be said of the band is that they are defiantly independent, preferring to record without the help of studios or session musicians and more recently, even raising money to record an album through online crowd-sourcing.
Eschewing rock and pop's traditional verse-chorus-verse structure, 65 (the preferred shorthand of fans) play music that is undeniably rock: guitars howl, synths wail and drums propel complex arrangements through ever-changing time signatures that can slow to a crawl one minute before accelerating to drum'n'bass velocities the next.
True to the template of so-called math rock, 65's tracks are intricate pieces of music rather than songs, which swoop between tempos, keys and even styles. Math rock shares progressive rock's love of space and texture, but doesn't give in to extravagance or indulgence. Also unlike prog, there are no solos, no jams and - thankfully - no Tolkien allusions. Instead, the music is tightly knit and disciplined, but no less expansive in its aural ambition.