Stars Of The Lid
And Their Refinement Of The Decline

Grandiose. Epic. Minimal. Neoclassical.

Release number 100 for the Kranky label. The number had been skipped and kept warm for them. Eighteen murals for over two hours of music.

Repetition: lies at the heart of many musical forms. It gives dance-music a groove. It provides pop and rock songs with what the English call a "hook," that thing that gets stuck in your head and never leaves. It highlights the key elements of the piece that might otherwise go unnoticed or underappreciated. But it can also emphasize a subtle cadence. It can draw attention to hidden or underground melodies. Used well, repetition can produce (at least in this type of music) that dramatic tension that usually culminates in a change (whether sudden or slow). Used poorly, it can be a symptom of lazy and uncreative songwriting. It can tire us, make us lose attention, make us switch "stations." Or, just when we think we know what's about to happen, it can meticulously hide or hold back, breaking our orthodox musical expectations with a formal, rhythmic, or tonal alteration that often coincides with the zenith of the piece. Repetition hypnotizes us, lulls us, and yes, sometimes bores us. A precision tool that can be either wonder or agony depending on whose hands it rests in.

Fortunately, this spring it rests in capable hands. Kranky has made reiteration and subtle variations an art form (with Labradford as its forefathers and masters). But with "And their refinement of the decline," I truly believe they have reached their peak. Stars of the Lid hail from Austin, Texas and are the long-term project of the duo Brian McBride (guitars and electronics) - Adam Wiltzie (electronics, former Windsor of the Derby and already a sound engineer for bands like Sparkehorse, Flaming Lips, and Mercury Rev) located respectively in Los Angeles and Brussels. The combo's early works were mainly composed of manipulated guitars and field-recordings, but since 2001, the year of the release of the previous and already colossal "The tired sound of Stars of the Lid," they have evolved incorporating glacial orchestral arrangements, piano, oboe, cellos, clarinets, trumpets (almost always treated but not mistreated) and the like. The change was also accompanied by greater focus on melody, always still delicate and melancholic, transforming their sound from pure drone music into a sort of deeply structured and classical minimalism.

Six years of slow intercontinental collaboration have made this refined and "expanded" symphony a unique work, an impressive work, and ultimately an important work. "And their refinement of the decline" turned out to be simply too ambitious for a single record, spreading its music over two CDs or six sides of vinyl. But the 120 minutes of music are not perceived as an extravagance but more as a necessity, a gift. While the previous album used space and time more often to paint creeping meditations, tonal textures, and resonances of simple and recurring chords, here they are more frequently "altered" to explore in a much more complex way the always fluid and attentive main structures. As such, the variations have transformed from the infinitesimal shifts of the past to more developed progressions built upon slow revolutions with a well-defined reason and direction. And while before many tracks seemed like snapshots taken arbitrarily from an undetermined length work now they often have a beginning and an end.

Take, for example, "Humectez la mouture," which succeeds, in just five and a half minutes, in presenting a sound microcosm that fully embodies the world of Stars of the Lid. The song opens with a cello drone that quickly leads to an elegant orchestrated tide of strings, a patch of ambient noise, and by the end of the first minute, a solitary reverberated piano attacks with an alternation of two rudimentary and stark chords, gradually gaining body and meaning through dusty oscillations and faint accompaniments that seem to come from who knows where, ending with a more intricate, yet tender and poignant, restatement of the main theme. Similarly, "Even if you're never awake (Deuxieme)" implodes, after three minutes of electronically handled slow violins, into a sad requiem for clarinet and piano (perhaps one of the album's most consistent moments, certainly the most intriguing) and finally settles into almost imperceptible choirs. Or again "Articulate silences part 2," a static and fluid drone that shifts without the listener almost noticing (it always depends on the way this music is listened to), into an ancient and neoclassical growing symphony. Even when McBride and Wiltzie linger in alienating repetitions of a single chord, as in the very lengthy final "December hunting for vegetarian fuckface", these are more frequently ornamental introductions for a refrain to come.

Difficult and perhaps useless anyway to isolate fragments, pieces, tracks: it would be like trying to dam a river peacefully but inexorably in full flood. There are eighteen canvases, but it is a single painting that forms before our eyes: it is the sound fresco of a disintegrated and floating scenario, magically suspended and static, enchanted by a mystical yet hyper-terrestrial sense of calm, realized through its own "being," religiously finalized to the "here" and "now," ecstatically awaiting something that will never be fulfilled. In short, Stars of the Lid have developed a new existence for their music, well beyond their beginnings about a decade ago, which can be fully categorized in drone music. Especially this genre has its admirers and detractors and often limitations (usually perceptual) given by the circumstances (and substances!) in which (or under which) it can be appreciated. Obviously, the assimilability of this work is still tied in some way (or in some person) to fixed stereotypes such as unconditional love for the sad and soft flow and a comprehension and penetration (I would say sensory) of the alternation of repetition-variation. But really here the two have elaborated and enriched their sound so effectively through fuller orchestrations and a more acute and profound compositional sense, transforming into something completely different and sweeping away (at least for my poor ears) any complaint often attributed to a certain type of music like being prolix, boring, or for many impenetrable. If one dives into this impenetrability, it becomes magnificence.

Analog and digital together, static yet evolving at the same time, this album is in my opinion the most creative and evocative sound universe imaginable. It is advisable to listen to such a monolith in absolute quiet, in silence, with eyes closed. Stars of the Lid have described their name as referring to the images that are generated between the eye and the closed eyelid. With "And their refinement of the decline," they have given these phantom images the perfect soundtrack.