devblog / friday 191121 (Patreon)

Hi, friends. It’s another devblog coming at you from the 65LABS R&D (Rain & Doom) Wing. 

First a quick word from our welcoming committee: a bunch of new people have joined the cause over the last week or so. Perhaps you joined up after seeing 65LABS propaganda postcards scattered about the venues we played in last week? Or perhaps you read about us in the Financial Times/Venture Capital Weekly/Yacht Owner's Digest, where presumably there are endless articles about how we are one of the hottest investments in town. The 65LABS Future Strategies Wing is actually putting together a plan right now to float ourselves on the London stock exchange. (It involves waiting for London to flood and then climbing onto a really big raft).

Regardless of how you found us, we are happy you have joined us. Thanks. Here are some quick notes for newcomers and a refresher for the rest of you:

- This is the devblog. A weekly update about progress at 65LABS. It arrives on Friday afternoons. 

- Please do check back through the old posts. There’s plenty of good noise/words/diagrams/music/confusion to discover on here.

- The main point of this Patreon is the Wreckage Systems live stream. You may be familiar with Version 1 of the stream, which is live RIGHT NOW, broadcasting across the whole of cyberspace. What you might not yet know is that since the public launch we have been working behind the scenes on Version 2. There is a secret stream of this for patrons that you can find HERE. Enjoy.

- When we launch V2 to the public, we also plan to release V1 as downloadable software. We have yet to decide if we will also put this software on sale to the public, but as a patron, you will receive a copy free. If you’d like your name to be included in the V1 Archive as a credit, please GO HERE and opt-in. It doesn’t matter how long ago you signed up - if you’re now here and supporting us before the launch of the software, you can add your name.

- There are now four Wreckage Releases (Under the Summs / Tomorrowd / Available Data / Mimik) as well as a host of other miscellaneous/experimental music lately being referred to as ‘research releases’. We offer Bandcamp download codes for all official Wreckage Releases and some of the bigger research ones. If you are newly signed up, you can navigate to the original Patreon posts and download mp3s of the releases. If you would prefer Bandcamp codes, please DM us via Patreon and we'll sort you out. (There will eventually be a cut-off point to receive codes for historic releases, but right now you're fine.)

- Here’s some useful links to bookmark:

SECRET V2 LIVE STREAM: https://youtu.be/fC9cP4beLOM (subject to change if we restart the test stream)

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 

And now back to the devblog…

THIS WEEK

- Our four remote noise technicians are back from tour. Cheers to everybody who came out to the shows! Solace and solidarity to those who had planned or wanted to come, but for one reason or another did not make it - we heard from quite a lot of people that this was the case. Unfortunately we are not sure when we will next be out on the road, apart from the yet-again rescheduled Russian shows that are now slated for spring. Third time lucky for those? Very much hope so.

- The tour merch is coming to our Bandcamp just as soon as we are able to sort it. It will include t-shirts, hoodies, and vinyl. The problem is we cannot put it on sale until we have been able to count up how much of everything we have, and in the Great Post-Tour Loadout of November 2021, the boxes of merch were unloaded first and subsequently drowned as several thousand tonnes of tired musical equipment flooded out of a trailer and into 65HQ. We have yet to summon the bravery to dive into this ocean of MIDI cables, drum skins and cheap guitars in order to retrieve all of the high fashion. But we will soon. Promise.

- V1 Archive beta testing has resumed. Big thanks to the beta testers. It is not going smoothly, but it is going. We are aware that this makes for particularly unglamorous devblog content, but it is what it is. Gotta get through it in order for you all to have your own little stream of infinite music. (In case you missed exactly what this is all about, check THIS explainer video).

- A bug was spotted in V2 stream and reported by a few people on the Discord. Thank you to you! As you can see if you look at it now, the log history has somehow maxed out and is no longer updating to show recently played systems. This ought to be a quick fix just as soon as we get around to it.

- Wreckage Release #5… There has been some complications regards this and we haven’t had time to figure out how to deal with them because of the tour. More on this just as soon as we’ve got our brains working again.

That’s all for now. We are planning on having something lined up for you next week. It'll be scruffy and loud, just the way you like it.

Until then, take care out there friends.