65daysofstatic's Wreckage Systems Pushes Algorithmic Music

We will keep going." This band is unstoppable! The song "Retreat!," by the instrumental post-rock band 65daysofstatic, has been used as a rallying cry by fans during their live shows. It is literally unstoppable, that's the statement of intent the quartet took.

Almost. Wreckage Systems has been playing continuously since March 2021. "Mumble Prime" and "Harp Collateral" are basically chunks of music-generating code called things. Each system plays until its time is up and then passes the baton to the next one.

The current system is displayed on a lo-fi screen above a scrolling chyron. There are updates that mix nerdy music-making details with droll peeks at life behind the scenes of 65Labs, the global operation of technicians, bot and server that keeps the machines running. In the world of Blade Runner, there's an effect of a retro dystopia.

A lot of the posts on the band's website are in character. They aren't at all consistent. It's not a one-way thing for us since no one really believes it. Everyone is encouraged to go with it. Fans on the project's Discord seem happy to play along, in reference to the idea of a semi-sentient machine ecosystems, fueled by episodes such as a glitch in May when multiple systems started playing simultaneously.

Wreckage Systems isn't the first one. Their output has become more experimental over time. Forays into danceable techno and film scoring eventually led to a commission for the soundtrack to the universe simulator No Man's Sky.

The band recorded both a conventional soundtrack album and hours of related audio snippets and cues that could be reassembled by the game engine to communicate with the player's environment and actions. That led to the Decomposition Theory series of concerts, in which audio and visuals were partially generated on the fly each night, with unpredictable results.

65daysofstatic was unable to record or tour in person when the Covid-19 epidemic hit. They were already equipped with the technology to make new 65daysofstatic music, and some of them were earmarked for a project to broadcast the results to the world. They began working on what would become Wreckage Systems when they released a collection of tracks under a project called A Year of Wreckage.