Stars of the LidBest Stars of the Lid Albums Ranked

And Their Refinement of the Decline

pitchfork

8.6

“The vanishing-point music created by drone elders Phil Niblock and, especially, LaMonte Young is what happens when a fixation on held tones reaches a tipping point. Timbre is reduced to either a single clear instrument or a sine wave, silence disappears completely, and the base-level interaction between small clusters of "pure" tone becomes the music's content. This kind of work takes what typical”

Music for Nitrous Oxide (30 Year Anniversary 2025 Remaster) [feat. Brian McBride & Adam Wiltzie]

pitchfork

8.5

“Before Brian McBride and Adam Wiltzie became neo-classical post-rockers, they were collage-minded 4-track recordists. A new reissue of their 1995 debut revisits their spooky, abstract roots.”

The Ballasted Orchestra

pitchfork

8.5

“In the 1990s, Stars of the Lid's Adam Wiltze and Brian McBride were making druggy and internally-focused drone music. On the East Austin, Tex., duo's sophomore album, reissued here on remastered vinyl, they did away with voices and followed their drones to a place where words have no meaning.”

Avec laudenum

pitchfork

8.0

“Legendary Pitchfork scribe Samir Khan once said that Stars of the Lid make the kind of music that makes consciousness seem like an annoying state. I hadn't yet heard the band when I read those words in his review of *Per Aspera Ad Astra*, but I knew I was going to soon. This was a time, if memory serves, when engagement with the everyday world of the senses took more courage than I could muster. A”

Gravitational Pull Vs. The Desire for an Aquatic Life

pitchfork

7.7

“The 1996 album, newly reissued, finds the drone duo transitioning from their rough-hewn early phase into a more graceful, wordlessly evocative mode.”