Stars of the lid refinement of the decline rar

On their first album in almost six years, Kranky's drone stars explore the difference between music and sound, turning in an effort that's much more minimal and muted than 's outstanding The Tired Sounds of 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 typically helps us to distinguish "music" from "sound," discards nearly all of it, and then starts over again from scratch. Drone legends Stars of the Lid find their music drifting toward this rarefied place on their first album after an almost six-year absence.

It is again a double CD with about two hours of music; it uses a similar palette of violin, cello, and Stuart Dempster-inspired horns to augment the electronically generated drones. Song titles again refer to brain chemistry "Dopamine Clouds Over Craven Cottage" , altered states "Another Ballad for Heavy Lids" , and the nuts and bolts of the music's creation Apreludes in C sharp major ". And yet, upon putting on Tired Sounds of And the place they're moving to is starker, quieter, somehow even more subtle, where the tiniest amount of sound information is put upon to do the greatest amount of work.

Where Tired Sounds of The first thing that becomes apparent is that there's less discernible guitar here. It betrays a breathtaking ignorance of hundreds of significant ambient and eclectic artists making drone music dating back to the 's. The duo deserves better, and it's safe to predict their beautiful music will endure anyway, long after the hype has passed. At their considerable best, as demonstrated on the double-length albums Tired Sounds and Their Refinement Of The Decline , members Brian McBride and Adam Wiltzie make mood music that sighs and surges with tidal-like speed and power.

Beatless and never hurried, it differs from much other electronic-based drone music in its delicate pauses and near-silences. These musical breaths, these spaces in between, draw your focus into spaces where not much actually happens.

But in the best possible way. Alan Lucas. Levi McConnell. Michael Nilsen. Scott Cecchin. Jeremy Bohmstein. Didier DuPont. Ryan Keenan. Patchwork Girl. Stefaan Deldaele. Wham Charles. Brian Wentzlaff. Ryan Ruppe. Septimus Spywindow. Andy Nealen. Matthew Mihalko. Jonathan Schenke. Brian Purington. Purchasable with gift card.

Dungtitled in A major Articulate Silences Articulate Silences part 2 The Evil That Never Arrived Preludes in C sharp major Don't Bother They're Here Dopamine Clouds Over Craven Cottage