#avec laudenum

Stars of the Lid | I Will Surround You

I’m sitting at my computer trying to write some clever opening line to this entry about Avec Laudenum by Stars of the Lid, but whatever I write seems to come up entirely short. I’ve deleted about five attempts so far. I want to somehow get across the strange, peaceful majesty of this album, and how much I love Stars of the Lid – I love ambient music generally, but there’s something about SotL that is particularly special to me. After a few failed attempts, it occurred to me that ambient music is notably adept at avoiding description. Music as an art form is something people have got used to finding ways of communicating about – it’s much easier to discuss melody and tone than it is to describe say, the smell of a petrol station or the feel of damp wool. However, ambient music is a genre that intentionally sidesteps all the parts of music that we like to discuss. It’s formless and minimal and it deals in subtle shades of emotion and texture, rather than rhythm, or lyrics, or immediate moments of expression or meaning. So having sidestepped the need to write that clever opening line, I’ll give my best shot at describing the 40 minutes of music that make up this album. Everything happens very slowly in the world of Stars of the Lid, and this record is probably the most minimal and subtle of their whole discography. Earlier work involved more tape loops, found sounds and dark, dense textures, and they would go on to explore more symphonic, organic sound worlds on their later albums, but on Avec Laudenum they created an delicate masterpiece of subtle beauty. The three parts of ‘The Atomium’ that make up the first half start with a distant overture of horns, before dissolving into a gentle swell of drones that sound like a strange organism slowly breathing. There are crackly noises that break through the stillness, as the drones get thicker and warmer, and a trickling, delayed guitar finds a centre ground for the ebbing and flowing tones to drift around. As this starts to recede, a strange, see-sawing pad comes to the fore, bringing a slightly darker feeling, before being superseded by a mesh of reversed guitar notes that dance like flickering shadows across the backdrop of chords and distant bells. After 21 minutes, it eventually comes to an abrupt halt, leaving you with a strange feeling of vertigo. This is quickly dispelled by the arrival of ‘Dust Breeding (1.316)+’, which introduces a much lighter, shimmering pulse, like a breath of wind blowing across the tundra. Deep, rich guitar drones arrive to underpin the sense of space, and in the distance a faraway string quartet cast fleeting notes into the cold air. It’s a sound so simultaneously subtle and vast that it’s breathtaking to hear – the amount of skill it takes to make soundscapes like this shouldn’t be underestimated. It’s easy to dismiss this as too simple or too formless, but the sense of space they create and the subtle shifts in tone that manage to carry such weight can only be pulled off by a band with an exacting control over their chosen palette. ‘I Will Surround You’ closes out the album with much warmer, gentler chords, bringing the whole record back from the brink of space and wrapping the listener up in an embrace of soft strings and more gently ebbing guitar drones. This is music that can quite happily sit in the background and bring a peaceful calm to your workspace or living room, but I’d highly recommend putting on a good pair of headphones and spending a late night appreciating the quality of the world being created. I just wouldn’t recommend trying to write about it…

Stars of the Lid - The Atomium (Parts 1,2, & 3)

From their 1999 album, 'Avec Laudenum'.

Stars Of The Lid - The Atomium

I was gonna upload part 3, but it seemed silly to post just one part of this three part masterpiece. Luckily someone uploaded the whole thing to YouTube. Thank you, internet.