Thursday 17/05/07 65daysofstatic @ The Phoenix, Exeter

65daysofstatic have changed. Three albums in, they’re a proper band now. Playing the KOKO on this tour, they’ve hit a certain height. Okay it’s not Wembley, but 65days are most definitely ‘alt’ and Isis, grand lords of ‘alt’ (in very broad terms) are playing the Koko this year, so they’re doing alright. The point is: it wasn’t always like this…

The year was 2004, the record ‘The Fall Of Math’. Five dudes from Sheffield release a mega-intense debut full of fuzz, packed with balls, and it remains their masterwork. They were small, the venues were toilet circuit but the sounds were big and the ideas bigger. They oozed a brand of intensity that could fill a room and kind of suspend you in it such was its density. Was it just luck? It wasn’t. Two follow-ups – ‘One Time For All Time’ and ‘The Destruction Of Small Ideas’ - and they’ve added to their depth. Their live show reflects this most emphatically.

The venues are bigger, there’s more air to fill and the recapturing of their youthful atmosphere is done with a message. There’s a big ol’ screen behind the boys tonight and they’ve material aplenty to justify a seventy-five minute slot.

Screens can make or break a gig – throw some colour and shapes into the eye-line with no apparent thought or meaning and you’re away. Big bands are the main culprits, as ever. There are so many, and like anything where there are too many, most are shite. Like any visual accompaniment to music though, done well (harder than it looks, probably) and you’ve a result. Simply put, screens are an issue. Here, tonight, at the Phoenix Arts Club in Exeter, none of the above apply. Haunting images of the evolutionary process versus war versus technology flood the visual senses to a monstrous and glitch-riddled soundtrack of ‘I Swallowed Hard Like I Understood’ and newer creation ‘Drove Through Ghosts To Get Here’, amongst others. It’s like the atmospheric instrumentalism of the hyperactive living dead.

The lynchpin was a clearly spelt out self-reprimanding of their own carbon dioxide emissions on a two week 2006 tour around Europe. More than what is safe, per person. While this may sound sanctimonious, this kind of self-awareness chugs nicely around their whole detuned, glitch-epic producing existence.

And it’s not just a ‘tories going green’ thing either, they mean this shit. Their tunes are destructive and so are they. They’re making a living, but it comes at a price. Is ignorance bliss? It won’t be when we poison the world to death and the more of our heroes that tell us so the better. They won’t save the world but they’ll provide a blistering soundtrack.

By the time ‘Retreat Retreat’ finally played to the ominous sound of its spoken intro: “this band is unstoppable” you couldn’t do much else but nod in healthy agreement.