Stars of the Lid

Also I looked at their website to get the release date: http://www.awvfts.com/
and misread one of the tour dates, which said
Yverdon
Switzerland

but my brain read both lines at once and thought they were playing in Swindon (UK), which would be really incongruous (also p. great, I could get the bus)

this was a pretty content-free post, but hey, tour dates, mostly western Europe, couple in Australia, four in the US so far

Sorry there was talk of A Winged Victory upthread. Didn't mean to confuse.

i love the first awvfts album. glad to hear good things about the upcoming one, can't wait to hear it.

i've been listening to atomos quite a bit since it came out and i've been really enjoying it. the emotional space it accesses is a bit more ambiguous than the debut which could be a bit like a nonstop cascade of melancholy. i was also surprised to hear far less piano than on the debut, since that tends to be dustin o'halloran's thing, but the arrangements here are quite lovely. that it's not as melodically driven makes some of the subtle shifts in sonics seem much more profound and moving. check it out if you haven't.

I'm only 2/3 of the way through track 1 but so far "less melodically driven" seems like a totally crazy person's interpretation of what I'm listening to.

Thanks for getting me off my ass to hear it though.

there are exceptions including that track but otherwise i still think it's generally true compared to the debut

Nah I'm sure you're right. Looking forward to the rest.

It was just funny to read "less melodically driven" -> press play -> devastating beauty

I read in an interview that O'Halloran had some kind of injury in his hand, so he was forced to play less piano on this one (since it was a commission on a deadline I guess?

there's a strong tonality/expressiveness about this music that sort of recalls the band Rachel's... it's affecting, and elicits a sense of relief upon first hearing it, but i feel like that sort of limits the 'life' of the music, where its effect wears faster than it would if it possessed more ambiguous qualities. still, the music is pleasant, and they've got some nice live material up on soundcloud.. stuff i've put on to help relax, a number of times.

I like to play 'Requiem for Dying Mothers Part 2' from 'Tired Sounds....' on a 24/7 loop

'And Their Refinement of the Decline' is beautiful too.

i should search out more...

Good job there Whiney

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/how-stars-of-the-lid-made-two-ambient-masterworks-20150721

yeah, nice one!
a little disappointing that a new album is not imminent, but good to hear they're working on it. i guess it makes sense that they would be working at a glacial pace.

When they were playing shows around the time of Kranky's anniversary they were sharing pics of themselves in the studio on their FB page so it's a little disingenuous to say "you press say whatever you want!" in response to whether a new record is in the works. Also I really really want them to put out a new record.

their complaints about recording during the summer in austin are cracking me up, this is a fun interview

ha, yeah, i like that they seem like very chill guys

they're really nice.

I e-mailed Stars of the Lid to inquire about the new album, and received this in response:
"don't worry chief,
there is news and a new 2xcd 3xlp to come.

should be availible in march/april at the latest..."

I'm putting "Stars of the Lid Chief" on my business card, if I ever get one.

― Zachary Scott (Zach S), Wednesday, October 11, 2006 10:04 PM (8 years ago)

i never realized this until right now, but he also emailed me a few months later with information on the release date. i always thought that i was just part of a mass email list, but he emailed it directly to me! i didn't even respond. i should probably respond now

haha, that is great. chief!
the real question is whether the new twin peaks will use this track
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETvKeB9SL0E

Glad these guys are generally nice in most folks' experience. Had a lame night with them personally, but they were on the road and guess it is not really fair to judge them based on that.

"renown"??

do you know any ambient fans who don't worship them? it's a tiny world but

Dug Tired out last night. Lush. Thanks, Whiney.

Tired and Refinement are by far their definitive albums but I've also really come to love Avec Laudenum.

The only others I have are Refinement and The Ballasted Orchestra.

Gravitational Pull vs. The Desire for an Aquatic Life is not one of their best but it's still an absolute classic and if you don't have it you are fucking up

i was listening to Refinement again last night and googling "for fans of stars of the lid" out of starvation for a new album, this is a gr8 revive

yeah i was just listening to refinement last week on the bus and it was almost ***too heavy***

xpost
did your search yield anything good?

i need to dig out the dead texan again. it's like pop-SOTL, so addictive

(yes i know that it's a. wiltzie from SOTL)

(i didn't mean for that to sound so snotty, sorry!)

dead texan is really good!

last night was enjoying Loscil and Biosphere

others listed here https://www.quora.com/Drone-Music/What-are-some-solid-Stars-of-the-Lid-like-recommendations

I hate to make it sound like he's derivative (he's not) but fans of SotL should check Kyle Bobby Dunn pronto

The person at the top of the link hoos posted also mentioned Kyle Bobby Dunn. i gotta get with the times, i don't think i've heard anything by him?

https://hardwax.com/24935/gas/nah-und-fern/

from the interview:

really, when you think of it, all this time that a record hasn't been released — that was us releasing a record, but it was the most minimal record we've ever released and nobody knew it was a record.

lmao

Stumbled upon this today - solo stuff from Adam Wiltzie, released earlier this year: http://open.spotify.com/album/5PQ0tdNTd7VeoRGZe9MdIC

streaming live tuesday!

https://boilerroom.tv/session/stars-of-the-lid/

please let there be nattily dressed hipsters reclining on cushions, eyes closed

whooooooa! i'm gonna try to go

I'm going to try to be there too

holy fuuu

i'm so projecting this at my house

Playing in LA next week and it's not looking good for my attendance. Immensely bummed.

I think I'm connected to the live stream--no action so far, tho

we have signal!!

Have no idea if the live stream captured just how colossal the sound was inside. Wow indeed!

yeah, I'm gonna hafta say it didn't... :(
still great, though! the projections translated very nicely. I'm looking forward to watching the recording (hopefully in better quality than the live stream)

I FEEL DEEPLY SATISFIED

The person at the top of the link hoos posted also mentioned Kyle Bobby Dunn. i gotta get with the times, i don't think i've heard anything by him?

He's good -- I have a number of his albums, all quite striking.

that was truly one of the best performances i've ever seen. here's way too much about it:

the music was predictably very, very good. the sound was excellent and massive and full. hearing the trademark SotL drone bass for an hour+ on massive speakers was transcendent. their set included requiem for dying mothers parts 1 and 2, december hunting for vegetarian fuckface, and a couple shorter pieces that seemed familiar but that i couldn't pinpoint.

it was really interesting to watch them perform with a string quartet. the string players were a living organism of sorts, their movements and phrasing breathing in and out with the music. (this is a good, short clip that illustrates the breathing and also the intensity of the performance: https://instagram.com/p/79VB0wypQ-/) i could only see adam wiltzie and the strings, (brian mcbride was hidden behind a giant speaker from my angle on the side), but it was a treat to see how he seems to function as the leader of the performance. he did the (minimal) talking between songs, and also conducted certain sections with the the neck of his guitar, slowly drawing it downward with each new drone entrance to provide waypoints for the strings.

i didn't expect that the live performance would be able to surpass the recorded versions, but at certain points they truly did. when i listen to SotL, i typically imagine synths making the noises. it comes across as programmed, at least to me. but live, you realize that it's the sound of a guitar run through many, many effect pedals. i took a picture of mcbride's setup after the show:

http://i.imgur.com/Y5RtyUN.jpg

in a live context there's more room for small variations and little mistakes to bleed through. they also changed the arrangements of certain sections. in particular, i remember requiem for dying mothers pt 2, which contains my favorite SotL moment - the part halfway through where everything fades out except for the strings and it sounds like water splashing up against cold rocks, and then the bass comes in at an ULTRA LOW AND DEEP frequency. anticipating this blissful moment, i have to admit i was a bit disappointed when they changed the arrangement to a long, repetitive buildup of cycling and overlapping strings, culminating with the ultra low/deep frequency payoff. it was still good, and it was totally stars of the lidsy, but for me it was like watching jurassic park and waiting for the "Hold On To Your Butts" part, but then samuel jackson unexpectedly launches into a short dramatic monologue about the things in your life that are worth holding onto the most, climaxing with "...so hold onto your butts!" - still cool, just different.

but the projections were the icing on the cake. for reference, this is what the space normally looks like:

http://i.imgur.com/eTfFFZO.jpg

from my vantage point on the far o left side of the stage. the relief at the front was especially, uh, relieved, which affected how the projected images appeared. For opener Christina Vantzou's set, the effect was ultimately frustrating for me. the visuals for her set were projected from the stage, onto part of the backdrop (maybe 20 feet high or so). but since the imagery often used concrete images (humans, body parts, objects) and the relief was so extreme that everything appeared disjointed and broken. i guess it was just frustrating because it looked like someone had put a lot of energy into the visuals, but no one took the space it was going to be projected onto into account. (the 2 people i was with liked it, fwiw)

where the projections for Vantzou were warped by the shape of the room, the projections for Stars of the Lid warped the room itself. first of all, they came from the back of the church, and a much larger portion of the space - the entire front area behind the performers, much of the side space that i was closer to, and also parts of the ceiling. the imagery they used was also much more appropriate for the space - more abstract, repeated patterns that absolutely came to life on the reliefs that were all over the church. there were very few flat spaces in the building, so it made sense to let abstract patterns dance around them and warp and slither down the walls and spiritual icons.

one last thing. BEST MOMENT: i believe it was during vegetarian fuckface. dynamically it was the peak of the evening. mcbride and wiltzie were in full on drone wildness, and the strings were boiling over as loudly as possible trying to keep up. it was just punishingly loud and awesome, and sustained. then the visuals gradually began incorporating flames, overlayed with some strobe-like circular hex patterns. the flames were rotating and bleeding all over the varying reliefs in the room, but at one point they focused on the front and central area where the main catholic iconography was. and for a moment, it all came together: flames spreading across the cross and jesus and mary and the rest of the crew, the devastating drone still in full effect and somehow getting even louder, the strobe overlay. in that moment, it was PURE METAL. i heard someone a few pews back loudly whisper "WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON??".

sorry this is so long. go see SotL if you ever get a chance.

oof sounds amazing. thanks for the report.