1. Stars of the Lid - And Their Refinement of the Decline (2007)
So here it is. Nine months later, I’ve finally reached number one. Given how long this project has taken, and how much increasing effort I’ve put into each write-up as I’ve progressed, I can’t help but feel like anything I write here is going to be somehow anticlimactic. So before I get into talking about this album and why it’s my favourite, I feel like I need to discuss the way in which this whole 100 album process has transpired. As I stated in my very first entry (back in August last year), the way I first went about starting this whole thing was by throwing a representative song from any album I thought might make the list into a playlist, and then roughly ordering them using mostly gut instinct until I had about 30 albums at the bottom that I could cut, leaving me with a list of 100. This gave me a starting point and led to my first write-up, and from then on I’ve gone through the list and ordered and re-ordered, making sure that each time I wrote an entry, I was happy that it was correctly placed in the list. This continued all the way up to last week’s write-up of In the Aeroplane Over the Sea, which only narrowly beat out In Rainbows after several days of playing both albums in the car just gave the former the edge at the last minute. Strangely though, …And Their Refinement of the Decline has been at the top spot since the very start. Somewhere in that initial process of non-specific shortlisting, this album ended up temporarily sitting at the number one spot. Whilst every other album got rearranged and moved – even those that I knew would be in the top 10 were moved around and pored over – at no point did I ever want to take this from the number one spot. The longer it stayed there the more right it seemed. I’ve mulled over this for the whole time I’ve been writing the blog – in reality if I were to stand this album up next to classics such as Bridge Over Troubled Water or Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space could I really justify its position? The reality is that whilst I know this is not a cult classic or an era defining masterpiece like some of these albums; it is an album that I personally love more than any other. One that I’d almost go so far as to say is actually a fairly defining part of my personality. It’s a strange thing to say about any piece of music, particularly a two hour long piece of minimalist, ambient droning; but over years of repeated listens I’ve absorbed every second of this album completely; I know every chord change, every subtle sound, every gentle melody and every soft textural shift. I’ve seen it played live, I’ve listened to it at home, I’ve heard it at work, in the car, alone, and with friends. Ambient music as a rule is designed to colour the background, to be pleasant but not demanding; but Stars of the Lid made something so much more than mere ambience when they crafted this record. It’s an album that sits on the intersection between drone music and minimal classical, its pillowy atmospherics are regularly dressed in melodic horns, drifting strings, and gentle piano refrains, giving an aching, human heart to what could otherwise be cold, distant abstraction. The way the shimmering textures of ‘Articulate Silences Pt.2’ swirl around its weeping cello refrain, or the moment that the tentative introductory notes of ‘Don’t Bother They’re Here’ relax into a languid waltz that sounds like the aural equivalent of a sigh of contentment; each track here defines itself against the overarching atmospheric continuum with its own quiet flourish. This kind of depth is the work of two people in complete control of their craft. With The Tired Sounds of Stars of the Lid the duo had moved from spacey drones into a warmer, denser kind of ambient music all of their own; but with this record they perfected it – balancing lush instrumentation with treated guitar loops to create a consistently beautiful and hypnotic suite of interlinked pieces. Tracks like ‘The Daughters of Quiet Minds’ carve aural sculptures out of thin air using dense textural changes and an enormous sense of space, whereas ‘Hiberner Toujours’ puts forward a moment of aching beauty with only a few well-placed cello notes and a vast cloud of reverb. To talk through every track here would not only take a long time, but would also miss the point – in spite of these individual moments of transcendence, this is one long suite of sound that is designed to calm, soothe, delight and envelop. I’ve been listening to it for well over ten years now, and the sound-world it offers and the emotions it stirs become more vital to me every time. It’s like a favourite t-shirt or a well-worn pair of shoes. It might not fit everyone, it may not even seem that appealing to many people, but whenever I put it on I’m immediately transported to somewhere happier. There are many purposes to music, to make you dance, to provoke thought or excite – but on a personal level, what can be better than music that brings you peace? The more time passes, the more I realise how important this is, and the more this album fills a space in my life that no other has yet managed to. And for that reason alone, this is my number one album.
Also listen to: The Tired Sounds of Stars of the Lid, Avec Laudenum
I’ve been writing this for almost nine months now, and I’ve basically been doing it for my own gratification. But if you are reading this, or have read any of my other write-ups and you’d like to leave comment or drop me a message to let me know your thoughts, then please do feel free.