ARTICLES
Benoît Pioulard's Précis
Label: Dynamophone
Label: Hidden Shoal

ALBUMS
Aemae
A Lily
Arc Lab
Blotnik Brothers
Gui Boratto
Cagesan
Jeremy Caulfield
Loren Dent
Do Make Say Think
Eats Tapes
Enduser
Domink Eulberg
Explosions in the Sky
Michael Fahres
The Field
Frivolous
Maximilian Hecker
Hug
Hush Arbors
Jan-M. Iversen
Espen Jørgensen
Kattoo
O.Lamm
Bruce Levingston
Tobias Lilja
Lusine
Marcia Blaine School
The Missing Ensemble
Nebulo
Ölvis
Charlemagne Palestine
Palomar
Pornopop
The Postmarks
Propergol Y Colargol
The Retail Sectors
R/R Coseboom
Sankt Otten
Scratch Massive
Slow Dancing Society
Stars of the Lid
subtractiveLAD
Sunosis
Aoki Takamasa
Amon Tobin
Tokyo Mask
Kate Wax
Wes Willenbring
Windmill

COMPILATIONS/MIXES
Chaos.Lovers
Cryosphere
Hub: 2004-2005
Rufs
Satoshi Tomiie

3" /7" /10"/12"/EPs
Agnes
AM/PM
Arctic Sunrise
Audion
Characterize 1
Dartriix
Death is Nothing To Fear
Don't Be A Stranger
Einóma
Fusiphorm
Heartthrob
Human Nature
Infant Cycle / Antmanuv
Lilienweiss
Luci
Mauve
Paco Osuna
Ben Parris
Carola Pisaturo
Portable
Sutekh
System
Aoki Takamasa
Cortney Tidwell
Andy Vaz

Stars of the Lid: And Their Refinement of the Decline
kranky

Painstakingly conceived and assembled over the past five years, Stars of the Lid's (Austin-based duo Adam Wiltzie and Brian McBride) And Their Refinement of the Decline is about as glorious a release as devotees of The Tired Sounds Of… might have hoped. Like that 2001 opus, the new collection comprises two compact (or three vinyl) discs and lasts two hours—an event, in other words, and not just because it's kranky's 100th release. Uninterrupted engagement with the material proves immersive, with time seeming to suspend itself altogether the more one surrenders to the music's pull.

Words like majestic, peaceful, hymnal, glacial, heavenly, and ethereal spring to mind as the discs' ghostly tones stretch across the sky and dusty piano chords echo down abandoned corridors. Strings gracefully curl like smoke rings and chords gently surge like slow-motion waves throughout the set's eighteen drifting drones. Titles alone speak volumes: “Dopamine Clouds Over Craven Cottage” alludes to the music's narcoticizing impact, plus Wiltzie and McBride prevent any whiff of over-earnestness from seeping in by titling pieces “Dungtitled (in A Major)” and “That Finger on Your Temple Is the Barrel of My Raygun.” The duo's augmented by a small chamber orchestra of strings, horns, and woodwinds plus a children's choir, but the music retains its spacious, uncluttered character despite such resources. Most of the pieces are calming; a few, like “Tippy's Demise,” unsettle with their brooding tones and subtle hint of threat.

Whether by accident or design, the album occasionally references other 'ambient' classics: the meandering theme that haunts “Don't Bother They're Here” strongly recalls Robert Wyatt's piano part in the opening piece of Eno's Music For Airports and the album's jarringly-titled outro, the eighteen-minute “December Hunting for Vegetarian Fuckface,” ends the release with elegiac string writing that, in its closing minutes especially, recalls Gavin Bryars' poignant Sinking of the Titanic. Regardless, And Their Refinement of the Decline remains a work of spellbinding grandeur.

April 2007