'Hyper-Dickensian, nightmare of a Tory government' slammed by band 65daysofstatic over duplicitous music funding

'In actual fact they are destroying any kind of infrastructure for future creativity'

(Rock4All/65daysofstatic/Facebook)

65daysofstatic have accused the government of using musicians as fig leaves with its arts funding, celebrating the small amounts of money it contributes to the industry while crippling it at a grassroots level.

The math rock band said that it "very much appreciated" the funding from the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) and will "put it to good use", but took issue with being used as its poster boys.

"The funding was announced yesterday in a press release over at gov.uk, in which we are named along with 18 other bands or artists, as beneficiaries of this public funding to help “export [our] music abroad"', they wrote on their website.

"Sometimes when you list things alphabetically, numbers appear before ‘A’, and so 65daysofstatic is at the top of the list of bands and artists, and not far below a quote from Business Secretary Sajid Javid declaring that this Music Export Growth Scheme is the government “banging the drum” (see what he did there?) for music and the UK’s culture industries.

A GIF embedded in 65days post

"The idea of 65daysofstatic being held up in any way as evidence that this hyper-Dickensian, fucking nightmare of a Tory government is apparently supporting the arts, when in actual fact they are destroying any kind of infrastructure for future creativity at the grassroots level and plunging the most vulnerable parts of society into further misery, leaves a bad taste in our mouths."

While they noted that spending money on arts is "better than spending it on Trident, bailing out banks [and] subsiding sketchy right-to-buy tactics', they were critical of the championing of creativity as a "return on investment".

"Discussing the point of why we should support arts is kind of out of the scope of this text, but the tl;dr would be something like ‘the world is ending", we’re gonna need some imaginative minds to be able to think our way out of extinction," they said.

The press release in question did reek of PR, with Javid boasting about how he "joined the music faithful at this year’s Glastonbury, witnessing first hand our country’s musical talent and the passion of festival-goers come rain or shine," (but stopping short of getting a selfie stick shot with every UK act on the bill).

You can read 65daysofstatic's post in full here.