65daysofstatic are to press their soundtrack to ‘Silent Running’ for a new release.
If you’ve ever watched 65daysofstatic play live and thought: ‘gee this reminds me of a long lost sci-fi movie’ then fear not! It seems that the Sheffield avant garde outfit are in clear agreement with you.
Earlier this year 65daysofstatic took part in a new project, supplying a score for cult 1972 film ‘Silent Running’. Directed by Douglas Trumbull, the science fiction movie deals extensively with the threat of pollution.
Depicting an Earth in which all flora and fauna have been destroyed, ‘Silent Running’ features the race to preserve a capsule featuring examples of life on the planet.
A visually stunning work, it benefits from Trumbull’s experience on ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’. The original score was heavy on orchestral work, although folk singer Joan Baez was on hand to add to the ecological themes.
Deciding to re-score the film, 65daysofstatic are set to perform their new work at Bestival this September. Following their work on ‘Inside’ by Jean Abreu earlier this year, this is now the second soundtrack project the band have undertaken in 2011.
Asking fans to help fund a physical pressing, the target was reached in just four hours. The fund is still open, with 65daysofstatic insisting that the more money they receive the larger the initial vinyl pressing of ‘Silent Running’ will be.
Find out more (and contribute) HERE.
A short statement from 65daysofstatic…
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At the start of 2011 we did a live rescore to the 1972 sci-fi film Silent Running at the Glasgow Film Festival. At the time, we thought it would be limited to those two nights.
In the end though, we wrote over 90 minutes of new music and the shows were so well received we’ve done a handful more around Europe, and have a handful more still to come. When the incidental ambience is stripped out of the music we wrote, there is still easily an album’s worth of new songs. People keep asking us if we are going to release it.
This Silent Running soundtrack has already grown to be a much bigger project than we had ever anticipated. If we are to document it, having it pressed onto heavyweight vinyl seems to be the way we ought to do it, to fit with the warm analog fuzz of the original film. Having a record released this way will also necessitate the tumultuous return of Dustpunk Records – a beast that has long lain dormant. It released our first ever e.p ten years ago. If this project succeeds and rouses it from its slumber, who knows what else the future could hold…
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