devblog / friday 291021 (Patreon)

Hi comrades. Here’s to the end of another week of hurtling through space and time, our old friend entropy steadily whittling away all of our energy and best intentions as we plummet toward utopia. We couldn't give you a proper devblog last week due to a distinct lack of electricity, so this week's has a bit of a catch up.

LAST WEEK (NOT THIS WEEK)

- 65daysofstatic continued to relearn how to play their songs. A humbling task, and our inability to do so has only been slightly exaggerated for comic effect. It’s great to remember how loud we are. It’s fascinating trying to concentrate on not-playing-our-songs while playing our songs, so our muscle memory can do all of the heavy lifting. Because if we accidentally put our brains in charges of our fingers it all very quickly falls apart.

- In a week of lots of bleak numbers creeping scarily in the wrong direction, a couple of important numbers that have remained mysteriously consistent are the numbers of remaining tickets for our forthcoming live shows. Which have now been on the very cusp of selling out for approximately eight thousand years. Your guess is as good as ours as to what shape this country-in-a-pandemic-stubbornly-pretending-there-isn’t-a-pandemic will be in by the time November comes. But it has been a very long time now since we have been able to fill rooms with noise, and we very much hope that this will still be possible and safe enough to enjoy. If you want to try and catch the apparently never-getting-sold last handful of tickets, try THIS LINK.

NOW THIS WEEK (THE ONE WE JUST LIVED THROUGH)

- A major new build of V2 is LIVE on the secret stream right now. This build brings a visual refresh that keeps the log, but also allows for a bit more data to be shown, including specific metadata for each system. (This hasn’t actually been added yet, but you’ll see a holding spot for it in the ‘Now Playing’ window’s ticker tape message.)

- At the last minute, our comrades over at the 65PropgandaNetwork managed to infect V2 with some malware. This malware plays the adverts for 65LABS that you might remember from the V1 stream, along with a lot of new ones. They’re only appearing every hour or so for the moment. Do they add or detract from the experience? Feedback welcome.

- The refresh also means that each system now has its own colour scheme. This has no real utility other than it looks kind of cool and will hopefully encourage more people to play the stream back through their giant TVs for hours on end while sitting in the dark, providing the feeling of being in a time stretched disco.

- A minor new feature… the Mist Systems (there's still a note to write more about these in due course) of which there are 3/4 in the V2 stream, have been updated. These were the ones that didn’t really do much in terms of logging data, so sometimes gave the impression that the stream had got stuck on a particular system. They are now spitting out a bit more info on what they’re actually doing.

- The Mumble Live Rig. A new Research Release is pending! The write-up has been written, and the audio already existed, but we are trying to find time to let Dave Sanderson give it a once-over before releasing it to you. You can already hear elements of Mumble One and Mumble Two as separate systems in the V2 stream, but did you know that they had an origin story? The Mumble Live Rig IS THAT STORY. A tale of lockdowns, algorithms, MIDI, more euclidean beats and the age old trope of 65 getting bored with something and moving on before taking the time to make it properly good.

- Speaking of Dave Sanderson, he also now has the files for the next ‘proper’ Wreckage Release. Not sure when this will be dropping yet, it will depend on how things go over the next week. It's possible it could end up being held back until after our live shows are out of the way (11th/12th/13th November, London/Manchester/Edinburgh, TICKETS). But let’s see how it goes.

- And speaking of the live shows, we’ll have a fresh batch of official 65LABS-themed merch on sale (as well as plain old 65daysofstatic-themed merch, obvs). Never fear, if you aren’t/can’t attend the live shows, they will be going up on our Bandcamp as soon as the shows are done. Images coming soon.

THINGS TO COME

- Fingers crossed The Mumble Live Rig Research Release drops for you all next week.

- Hoping to get some more systems into V2, it's been a while now.

- More actual 65daysofstatic rehearsals to confuse all the day-to-day 65LABS logistics.

That's it for now, friends. Hope you are all ok out there.

USEFUL LINKS

SECRET V2 LIVE STREAM: https://youtu.be/fC9cP4beLOM 

V1 LIVE STREAM: https://youtube.com/65propaganda/live

V1 AUDIO-ONLY STREAM: https://www.65daysofstatic.com 

65 DISCORD (connect your Patreon to access the back channel): https://discord.gg/P53sgehW7f