Double LP
The unquestionably legendary debut LP by Stars of the Lid finally makes its way to vinyl on the occasion of its 30th anniversary. Three decades is a long enough time to solidify your legend, something well enough established for a group now considered pioneers in their field, but the circumstances were somewhat different back on Christmas Day 1992 when the pair of Adam Wiltzie and Brian McBride first convened in Austin to begin work on what would over the space of two years slowly become Music for Nitrous Oxide. In that city at that time, the pair were out on their own, their particular interest in expansive slabs of slow moving fields of drone, primarily based around guitars, a unique proposition with few understanding allies. The same wasn't true of other parts of the world, however. Virgin's Ambient 4: Isolationism compilation, released in 1994 and featuring kindred spirits Labradford (who they would later share a label with), Main (who they sample on second track, 'Adamord'), Thomas Koner and more, was not only speaking a similar language, one which valued silence and space in Satie and Cageian type ways, but also provides as good a descriptor of the Stars of the Lid sound as I can conceive. Isolationist speaks clearly to their overall aesthetic and psychogeographic circumstances, alone and unmoored in a large city populus surrounded by endless desert. The heavily processed guitars, bottomless drones and obscure spoken word samples are the very essence of world building, constructed in a way so as to recall the noisemaking of other geographically remote outfits like Spacemen 3 (if you don't consider Rugby remote, I'd suggest you didn't grow up here) or Surface of the Earth. This is the infinite horizon sound from the lost highway. Later the duo found their space and time (and a whole host of contemporaries), but here they were fashioning their own new version of the world into being. Elemental then, still seismic now.
FFO: Main, Surface of the Earth, Labradford, Thomas Koner, Nivhek
