A Winged Victory For The Sullen

DocMcCoyDocMcCoy "Go and laugh in your own country!" 5,917 Posts
edited September 2011 in Strut Central
I gather this is getting a lot of Pitchfuck/blog love at the moment, but I couldn't care less about that. All I know is that a link to this Soundcloud page came up in my Twitter feed yesterday, and I've listened to nothing else today. I don't know what it is about music with a smacked-out kind of vibe and acres of space and air that's appealing to me right now, but this is definitely hitting the same sweet spot that late 70s Eno, Talk Talk, PCO and noodly Kraut stuff like Klaus Sch??lze, Tangerine Dream or Ash Ra Tempel/G??ttsching usually reach.

The gestation of it is kind of interesting - from the press release;

The recordings began with one late night session in the famed Grunewald Church in Berlin on a 1950s imperial B??sendorfer piano and strings were added in the historic East Berlin DDR radio studios along the River Spree. One last session on a handmade Fazioli piano in a private studio on the Northern cusp of Italy, before the final mixes took place in a 17th century villa near Ferrara with the assistance of Francesco Donadello. All songs were then processed completely analogue straight to magnetic tape. Their secret to harvesting new melodic structures from the thin air of existence was for the duo to push themselves to dangerous territory, realising that clear thinking at the wrong moment could stifle the compositions. The final result is seven landscapes of harmonic ingemination.

Apparently the last time the word "ingemination" appeared in any dictionary was in the 1913 edition of Webster's. I got your "back to mono" right here, bitches.

This video is interesting, too, if only for the shots of the (now closed) DDR Radio Studios. Such a shame that there are fewer and fewer of these beautiful big rooms where people can record things like this.



These guys are playing the Volksb??hne in Berlin next month. I'm there.

  Comments


  • this is amazing.


    you have changed the landscape of my day entirely.

  • bassiebassie 11,710 Posts
    This would have passed me right by...I am a fan of Stars of the Lid but fairly removed from this world.
    Thank You for posting.

  • this kind of music is part of my psyche. i was trained on the classics from birth, and i could swear i didn't hear a guitar until i was 12.

    from what ive gone through of this, the execution us nearly flawless for what it's trying to achieve. this delivers on all the promises godspeed you black emperor! couldn't keep.

  • Can't wait to hear this. I'm pretty much a Stars of the Lid fanboy and all the Adam Wiltzie and Brian McBride side projects have been superb so why would this be any different?

  • OkemOkem 4,617 Posts
    So chill bro.

  • DocMcCoyDocMcCoy "Go and laugh in your own country!" 5,917 Posts
    See, the worst that could happen to this record - that Steep Hills Of Vicodin Tears tune in particular - is that parts of it ends up supplanting Hopp??polla as the lazy music supe's sound-bed of choice when they need to convey a sense of uplifting grandeur or intense emotion.

    You really need to play it loud on a decent system, though - the bottom end's as heavy as anything on DMZ, for instance.

  • They are performing in the sculpture hall at the Carnegie Museum of Art here in Pittsburgh, which could be incredible. i haven't checked into them too much, but I figure I need to go on the strength of Stars of the Lid

  • Thank you for posting this. Really wonderful stuff.

  • chrisflyer said:
    They are performing in the sculpture hall at the Carnegie Museum of Art here in Pittsburgh, which could be incredible. i haven't checked into them too much, but I figure I need to go on the strength of Stars of the Lid

    This was last night, and it was tremendous. If you have the opportunity to see them, don't sleep.

  • ive been playing out stars of the lid non-stop all week at work. something about the cold, dark morning of autumn....

  • sticky_dojahsticky_dojah New York City. 2,136 Posts
    Thanks Doc for poasting this. Really heartgrabbing! Will try to make it to the Berlin show....


  • sticky_dojahsticky_dojah New York City. 2,136 Posts
    Tickets copped for the Berlin show! See you there, Strutter(s)!

  • JimsterJimster Cruffiton.etsy.com 6,955 Posts
    DocMcCoy said:
    This video is interesting, too, if only for the shots of the (now closed) DDR Radio Studios. Such a shame that there are fewer and fewer of these beautiful big rooms where people can record things like this.

    A tragic consequence of the discovery that people can make dollar offa the demo version of Fruity Loops.

    I'd never heard of any of these people before, nor that "Modern Classical Drone" as a styleway existed, but it's nice. I have hella bass available and it's nice to see it used. P*ul, did I ever mention that a friend of mine once had the Paddy's Wigwam gig? I am sure you know of where I speak. I recalled that one thing that defined the sound in such spaces was that you could actually perceive the air moving, especially when there were passages of quiet after big chords.

    It's something that I one day hope to capture and add to, say, the sound of a double-bass being bowed, or played pizz, which would sound like vikings are trying to break down your (cathederal) doors.

    Ta again.

  • Steep Hills Of Vicodin Tears
    A Winged Victory For The Sullen

    I'm assuming this is all kinda tongue-in-cheek on their part, right?

    Srs question. I'm not up on these guys. And while I have no doubts about their musical abilities or the quality of their music (I listened to the above clip), there's no way they are alltogether serious with these song/group titles, right?
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