Stars Of The Lid – Music For Nitrous Oxide, 30th Anniversary Vinyl 2xLP

Stars Of The Lid – Music For Nitrous Oxide, 30th Anniversary Vinyl 2xLP

Remastered for its 30th anniversary, Stars of the Lid's polarisingly gloomy, tape-saturated debut is finally back - and on vinyl for the first time. A far cry from the duo's later material, it catches SoTL at their most raw and experimental, with Adam Wiltzie setting amp-damaged guitar drones over Brian McBride's growling concrète tape loops and pulverized samples - think Eno, Labradford or Basinski.

When you think about Stars of the Lid, it's almost too easy to default to the over-plagiarised e-bowed hums that anchored 2001's 'The Tired Sounds of Stars of the Lid' or the modish neoclassical motifs of its critically revered follow-up 'And Their Refinement of the Decline'. But the band had been operating for years prior to this; Wiltzie and McBride had met in Austin while they were both studying at the University of Texas, and Wiltzie had been a fan of McBride's experimental student radio show. They officially assembled in 1992 and started sketching ideas using a four-track recorder, a Casio SK-5 sampler and a few guitars, countering Austin's tired rock fixations with doggedly unpopular music inspired by David Lynch's heaving 'Eraserhead' soundscapes and Gavin Bryars' eerie 'The Sinking of the Titanic'. 

Listening to this early, noisy material now, it's easier to understand why McBride and Wiltzie were lumped together with post-rock bands like Tortoise, Godspeed You! Black Emperor and Mogwai. Recorded without access to proper studio equipment, there's a punk aesthetic at the core of 'Music for Nitrous Oxide' that had all but disappeared by the time they reached 1997's beloved 'The Ballasted Orchestra'. Tune into '(Live) Lid', a basement jam recorded straight to DAT, and you can hear how SoTL connects the dots between proto-post rock acts like Sonic Youth and Swans, and the duo's contemporaries like Windy & Carl, Labradford and Low. Piercing feedback and extended bowed guitar tones are beefed up with MBV-like layers of distortion, and drums (yep, really) just rattle away off camera, seemingly catching a sub-50bpm slowcore groove - it's definitely not ambient in the Eno sense, and if it's rock it's been opiated until there's little left.

Side A:
Before Top Dead Center
Adamord

Side B:
Madison
Down
Lagging

Side C:
(Live) Lid
Tape Hiss Makes Me Happy

Side D:
The Swellsong
Goodnight