65daysofstatic’s new album No Man’s Sky searches for humanity in a world filled with artificial intelligence

It’s not often that a band returns to the same game’s soundtrack nine years after its release, but then again, most games aren’t like that No sky man. Once it is displayed on Tonight show With Jimmy Fallon and at the E3 press conferences, in 2016, No sky man It is heralded as the future of gaming. All of this was made possible thanks to the procedural generation that spawned the vast science fiction world.

Nearly a decade later, with post-rock band 65daysofstatic returning to re-record the ever-evolving game, the content created is no longer the exciting future it once seemed. With social media inundated with AI and AI-generated bands creeping into Spotify, the technology that once powered gaming dreams has become a dystopian nightmare.

“It’s just capitalism, isn’t it?” says Paul Wolinsky of 65daysofstatic. “It’s ruining everything. It’s all these CEOs who don’t understand the difference between art and content.”

This is the place Tripsa defiant human soundtrack that stands firm against the rise of music-generating machines. Working alongside Hello Games’ audio director Paul Weir, Wolinski has spent the past year turning a series of unreleased abstract tracks into full-fledged songs. They were once intended as pieces to be endlessly reassembled No sky manAlgorithmically, Bowles sought to reimagine these ethereal sounds and tones into something that sounded more entirely human. The result is a 32-track, four-LP album that combines 65 Days’ remastered tracks with Weir’s original compositions.

“For this record, we were more interested in turning all that endless stuff into something more intentional — something detailed and literal,” Wolinsky says. Where is the initial soundtrack Music for an infinite worldIts powerful drums and swelling guitars match the highs and lows of launching into space, Trips It’s an altogether more whimsical creation, channeling the quiet sense of foreboding of arriving on an unknown planet, the optimism of the initial score replaced by a more ambiguous reality.

“When we first started this, I assumed it would just be a remix of our old selves, but most of the tracks didn’t provide an origin point for an actual song at all… it was much harder, more obscure,” Wolinski says. Fortunately, 65daysofstatic had an ethereal expert on hand: Weir.

While the band began experimenting with procedural generation in their live audio/visual performances, No sky man She continued to grow and develop, and she needed music to match. “I didn’t want to look like I was faking 65 days of stillness, you know?” Weir says, as he sits down at his synthesizer, picking up where the static band left off. “I’m as much a sound designer as I am a composer, and this has brought a lot of abstraction to some of the music. There are a lot of strange sounds!”

As 65daysofstatic’s prog-laden epics combine with Weir’s synth-driven ambiance, the result is closer to a Philip Glass score than a noise-laden post-rock record. It’s a marked improvement over what came before, and it’s an identical development No sky manA journey from rocky launches to the sprawling sci-fi epic it is today. “It’s a funny old connection,” Weir says, having worked on the same game for 14 years. “We both keep saying, ‘Okay, it’s time to move on!’” and then at the same time delighted with his strength and continued success.

It’s not just Hello Games that has enjoyed its rewards No sky mansuccess. Of the top 65daysofstatic songs on Spotify, nine of them were written for the game. No sky man The songs have become an integral part of 65 Days’ worth of live sets, and these tracks live on outside of the game in a way that soundtracks rarely do. “For us, it’s always been a consistent 65-day record as far as it has been No sky man “We’ve been lucky enough to be associated with some big things in our careers, but to be associated with something that has had such a massive cultural impact, it’s just a nice feeling,” Wolinsky says.

Now with Trips In the wild, could 65daysofstatic and Weir perform music together live? “We wouldn’t rule out the possibility of doing something on the 10th anniversary in one form or another,” Weir teases.

Much like a massive transformation No sky man Since its release, the world’s relationship with technology has completely changed since 2016. When Wolinski first learned about the possibilities of using procedural generation to rearrange music, he tells me it became something of an obsession, inspiring the band’s live-coded, improvised audio/visual tours, and 2019’s album Algorithmic Decomposition theoryAnd even a doctorate. “No sky man “It definitely sent us in that other direction,” Wolinsky smiles. “And I’m really happy about that.”

However, in 2025, Wolinsky believes the name of generative technology has been tarnished by instant pathos. “We returned to this project because we strongly oppose the connection between generative systems and the decline of artificial intelligence,” Wolinsky says. “I think there’s a big difference between that and No sky manGenerative systems for… Now it’s all about creating more content to browse, just to hold people’s attention for a few seconds. “The whole thing is miserable.”

“with No sky manIt’s all our music, it’s all handmade. “The computer doesn’t create anything, what it does is rearrange it,” Weir explains. Despite the obvious difference between an algorithm that brings human-made music together and one that simply coaxes it into existence, with hardworking human artists currently Prevent impersonation from fraudsters with AI, The Pauls felt compelled to respond to the computer-driven composition.

TripsSo it’s more than just an album. It’s humans taking a stand against the rise of musical instruments. “Who cares if computers can produce music? That’s not music,” Wolinsky says. “Moving speakers to generate sound waves is a very small part of what gives music meaning. It’s all about the social relationships surrounding it, the human dialogue between one person and another, even if they’ve never met. That’s art — which is why generative AI completely misses the point.”

^{_{Trips Available now on streaming platforms and Vinyl.}}