65daysofstatic performing The Fall of Math, Manchester Cathedral, 29 October

Joe Shrewsbury stalks the stage, gripping his guitar in combative fashion, a stance chiming with the defensive ruminations he adopts when discussing tonight’s performance of 65daysofstatic's debut LP, The Fall of Math, a decade after its release. “We weren’t in a place where we were looking to the past when this 10 year stuff snuck up,” he admits at one point. Before Hole, the ninth track, he seems bored, muttering “we’re going to bash through the rest of this then show you what we’ve been doing in the ten years since”, before doing just that, the final three songs zipping by in an impatient flurry of warring guitars and disintegrative electronic mutations. 

Shrewsbury's discomfort is understandable, even if it is his own band doing the retro-romancing. However, from the suffocating scattershot electronica of Another Code Against The Gone, to Retreat! Retreat!’s irrepressible dam-bursting surge and the title track’s ever-tightening matrix of drilled beats, these songs remain thrillingly full-blooded rather than spectral remnants of the past. 

65daysofstatic don’t ever settle; from their formative impetuous thrashy glitch, to the thoughtfully methodic (and melodic) Silent Running re-scoring and latter day re-immersion into binary 1s and 0s, the Sheffield group have always used each record as a chance to close the door on one avenue and open up a portal to another. Where they currently reside is demonstrated with graceful power in tonight’s second of two sets; seven eighths of last year’s Wild Light rumbles round the Cathedral nave, Prisms' bass tremors flicked on and off at will, clenching and releasing its pincer hold on the audience. It’s the artist’s prerogative to keep advancing of course, but those gathered here tonight are vocally thankful for this brief glance backwards. [Simon Jay Catling]