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 trip to Amoeba shortly after an email exchange with Samir netted me a copy of Music for Nitrous Oxide, which proved to be the perfect introduction. During that time I wanted my drone music to have as prickly an edge as possible, and the raw four-track transmission of Music for Nitrous Oxide was just the thing. Since then, Stars of the Lid have reflected on their aesthetic, decided on the core elements that make their music what it is, and refined the drones so that the minimum sound achieves maximum impact.
Avec Laudenum was released on the Belgian label Sub Rosa in 2000, and is just now seeing domestic release. It's interesting to hear this record after 2001's The Tired Sounds of Stars of the Lid, which found Brian McBride and Adam Wiltzie coming into their own as studio composers. Knowing what came after, Avec Laudenum sounds a bit like a transitional record, capturing the duo at a point where they were reaching a plateau with their instrumental set-up, and just before they added the acoustic instruments that gave The Tired Sounds its unique feel. Everything here is so much more carefully recorded and layered than earlier releases like The Ballasted Orchestra, and yet the same elements are present.
During the first of three parts of "The Atomium", the gently modulating drones have the piercing clarity that occasionally approaches sine wave territory. This track also has one of the few instances of any sort of percussive sound on Avec Laudenum-- in this case, a sort of faint scraping that adds texture to the crystalline sheen. One doesn't normally associate the word "rhythm" with this band, but a couple tracks work up some tension through the repeated use of gradual swells of sound. The rising and falling feedback loops that make up "The Atomium"'s second part accumulate over time like darkness in room at dusk. The third track in the suite sounds quite Fripp & Eno, and the contrast provided by the ethereal keyboards and the snarling reverse tape of feedback makes it clear that this music comes from the collaboration of two distinct personalities. Avec Laudenum was composed through the mail as Wiltzie and McBride lived in different cities, and with the third part of "The Atomium", you can almost see a split screen of the two lonely men trotting out to their respective mailboxes.
Two fine tracks close out the record. I thought the title of "Dust Breeding" sounded familiar, but it turns out it wasn't the first track from Christian Marclay's Records compilation I was thinking of, it was "Gas Farming" from The Tired Sounds. Title aside, "Dust Breeding" does sound more like the two-disc epic that followed than any other track here, in its use of constantly shifting, shorter phrases that sound as though they were recorded in a cavernous space. The closing "I Will Surround You" uses a similar technique but dries the reverb just a bit, sounding even more lonesome and forlorn in the process. And then, in a characteristic move, the tone changes halfway through and the drones begin to ascend, ending on a note of uplift. Avec Laudenum is not much of a departure, but it stands as perhaps Stars of the Lid's most focused and precise record. And Stars of the Lid in The Zone can only be a good thing.
