Stars Of The Lid

I don't spend very much time in the bubble chair suspended from the ceiling, stroking both my chin and a white cat. (I don't spend that much time on the sex swing either!) But if I did, then Stars Of The Lid would be my Ambient music of choice.

Adam Wiltzie and Brian McBride make instrumentals because "It just satisfied something we wanted to express. When you're trying to pay homage to the sounds of your refrigerator, there's no need for vocals."

Originally formed in Austin Texas in 1993 they now live in separate continents with Wiltzie living in Brussels. McBride used to have a day job as a Debating Coach. (Now there's a job that didn't feature in the Arctic Monkeys tradesman's line up.)

They use a mixture of heavily treated guitars, strings brass and "Found Sounds." It's not just the fridge, it's the sound of the kitchen it's in! Everything is squeezed, stretched or twisted into a completely different shape. Sounds build and ebb away. And sometimes they don't build very much!

It may be drones and echoes but the effect is often staggeringly beautiful, sometimes you're forced to concentrate on the tiniest sound and other times you can just let it wash over you. Fac 21 from 2001's album The Tired Sounds Of Stars Of The Lid is rich, orchestral, and uplifting but half way through it there is a creepy electrical crackle and rumble. Barely audible, but that's what makes it disconcerting. (Coincidentally Wiltzie and McBride have complained about the initial vinyl pressing of their second album Gravitational Pull vs The Desire For An Aquatic Life which suffered from surface noise. How can they tell? Sceptic slap down! It seems the undynamic duo actually are listening!)

The music is very cinematic and there is a real David Lynch feel. (They even call one of their tracks Music For Twin Peaks.) You could use their material for documentary soundtracks, (once Sigur Ros have been thoroughly mined) or Survival Horror games like Resident Evil.

4AD supremo Ivo Watts described them as making the most important music of the 21st century. (A view possibly shared by Cocteau Twin Liz Fraser who said " Sugar bee slip doh, sequin tree honey trollop")

Of course the whole thing with ambient music is you need to approach it in a different way. On one hand, using it as something nice to go to sleep to or playing it in your crystal shop and incense shack just seems a tad disrespectful. But then you've also got to ask yourself, what is it for and does it mean anything? What if it's just a bunch of random sounds thrown together and shipped out to the gullible?


As with many other things, the answer lies with Brian Eno and his ground-breaking series of albums like Discreet Music and Music for Airports.

In 1975 he was in hospital, in a body cast following a car crash. He was listening to 18th century harp music, with the volume too quiet, but unable to adjust it because he couldn't move. He noticed the way that the music blended in with the environment, working on "many different levels of listening attention without forcing one in particular". Eno made Ambient Music as a working, utilitarian music. To add to or change the environment you are in and the experience you are having. He described it as like a painter taking a figure out of a painting to create space. By taking out the vocals or by using software and loops to create a random element that would replace the musicians own intervention or personality, he could create a space that would filled by the listener's experience (presumably either consciously or unconsciously). So it's ok then. It's official. You can go to sleep to it or even buy a candle and some pot pourri. (That's the ambient equivalent of smashing up the seats!)

The volume thing is important though. Discreet Music was meant to be played at barely audible volumes. Similarly Harold Budd (who Eno collaborated with on Plateaux Of Mirror in 1980) aimed to play his piano as quietly as possible. It's a principle I wish my violin playing eight year old would adopt.

There is a good selection of Stars On The Lid material at www.myspace.com/starsofthelid and there are 8 albums and assorted solo projects to work through for the truly committed.

I'm just intrigued by the whole idea of seeing this stuff played live. Seating, a string section and projections are promised! Rocking out is not!

Brian Eno

The sum of all human knowledge can be reduced to 2 unshakeable facts. Rod Stewart likes blondes and the first 2 Roxy Music albums are miles better than anything else they've done since. Scientists and divorce lawyers may have been researching the Rod question for years but I think the Roxy conundrum is simply due to the presence (and then absence) of Brian Eno.

The first Roxy Music lp is a very strange affair, with a song about Casablanca (2HB as in To Humperty Bograt) and Chance Meeting, which has the guitar sound from hell, which was always used on sitcom Butterflies to announce the fact that a teenage bedroom door had opened. Here was a band that thought (quite correctly, but also uniquely) that the oboe was an instrument of RAWK. The band looked the part too, part Glam Rock, part crooner, part futuristic Teddy Boy, not to mention Phil Manzanera's star shaped spangle specs and then this straggly haired, egg headed man-lizard Brain Eno making wibbly noises with keyboards and oscillators the size of a telephone exchange.

The second lp For Your Pleasure doesn't cross as many musical styles as the first one, but it does have Do The Strand (and you cannot beat songs about dance crazes…especially if they're imaginary dance crazes) and In Every Dream Home A Heartache. You also can't beat a song about isolation, luxury ("Bungalow Ranch Style") and a blow up doll. "I blew up your body, but you blew my mind."

After leaving Roxy Music, Eno made 4 bonkers pop albums. Here Come The Warm Jets, Taking Tiger Mountain By Strategy, Another Green World and Before And After Science.

Here Come The Warm Jets has got song titles like The Paw Paw Negro Blowtorch and Needle In The Camels Eye to confuse and confound the pop pickers. It's also got Baby's On Fire, which Eno sings in an exaggerated, vowel torturing style, supposedly in bitter tribute to Bryan Ferry's vocal attributes. When Mark Riley acrimoniously left The Fall he used to cover Baby's On Fire with possibly similar snidey motives. Mark E Smith used to repay the favour though with a Bo Diddley style song called Hey Mark Riley (which went something along the lines of "Saw Mark Riley by the window sill, listen to your words it's A New Face In Hell"). I once saw Mark Riley and The Creepers try to play this as their own impromptu encore. I still treasure the look of horror on the bass player's face as he tried to play a Bo Diddley beat, obviously for the first time and obviously without having even heard it before in his life.

My favourite Eno album is Taking Tiger Mountain By Strategy. It's the impeccably played but ramshackle quality of the arrangements that I really like. The song titles are fantastic cut-up nonsense. My evidence for the prosecution includes Burning Airlines Give You So Much More, Mother Whale Eyeless and Put a Straw Under Baby. The vocal style is sly camp. The songs break all the rules. of Pop, but still sound warm and involving and indeed you do want to get involved. You want to hear the stories from this other world, even though you're only catching snippets that maybe you'll never understand. Back In Judy's Jungle has treated guitars, rattley drums and a one-note bass with lots of space. It sounds like an Oompah band about to fall over.

The guitar playing throughout is fantastic with scratchy, rattley rhythm playing. I've a horrible feeling the excellent drumming (It's not just loose, it's positively floppy) may be down to Phil Collins. If it is YOU'RE STILL NOT FORGIVEN.

I love the bass playing on Third Uncle. It starts with 1 bass note that gradually gets echoed as the manic scratch rhythm and clattering percussion take over. There's an 8 note bass run that seems to come out of nowhere and goes straight back there. He only does it twice but to my (bass player's) ears it just seems to crank up the song far more than seems possible. And then there's the one note again …but dropped down lower and flatter. And the only vocal line that stands out is "I thought it was you."….And then Bauhaus went and covered it.

Put A Straw Under Baby has an impossibly woozy feel, with scraped, discordant string arrangements (Vic Chestnutt or even Junco Pardner from Sandinista). In many ways it's like a nursery rhyme or one very scary lullaby.

The Before And After Science album has Kings Lead Hat (yes it's an anagram of Talking Heads and yes he produced More Songs About Buildings And Food, Fear Of Music and Remain In Light). He was involved with Bowies three Berlin era albums Low Heroes and Lodger. The instrumentals on the second side of Low in particular show Eno's stamp.

He created space around U2 after Steve Lillywhite's big messy rock sounding second lp (and I do like to leave a lot of space around U2.) and he rescued James who were floundering after the power and seat of the pants feel of their live shows failed to make it onto vinyl. They turned into something different though….but that different thing was still interesting because of Eno. The ambient albums like Music for Airports and Music For Films shone a light on the work of people like Harold Budd and the collaboration with David Byrne on 1981's My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts is arguably the first album where the vocals are completely based on samples.

Much is made of Eno's legendary non-musician status and call me sceptical but I bet he's picked up a few tricks over the years. Fortunately he just keeps cropping up, a kind of Zelig figure who makes the people around him more interesting

Eno - Taking Tiger Mountain By Strategy

Puncture repair nightmare puts me back on the bus, and the journey gets me half way through Eno’s Taking Tiger Mountain By Strategy.

I like his pop glam albums best but always go for this one over Before And After Science or Here Come The Warm Jets. It’s the impeccable played but ramshackle quality of the arrangements that I really like. The song titles are fantastic cut up nonsense (My evidence for the prosecution includes Burning Airlines Give You So Much More, Mother Whale Eyeless and Put a Straw Under Baby). The vocal style is sly camp and the lyrics are obviously never going to connect with too many people as they break all the rules of Pop. I mean…where are the love songs?…What can the little girls understand?…Where is the cheatin’ lyin’ and slippin’ around?

It breaks the rules but still sounds warm and involving and indeed you do want to get involved. You want to hear the stories from this other world, even though you’re only catching snippets that maybe you’ll never understand. Back In Judy’s Jungle has treated guitars, rattley drums and a one-note bass with lots of space. It sounds like an Oompah band about to fall over

The guitar playing throughout is fantastic with scratchy, rattley rhythm playing. I’ve a horrible feeling the excellent drumming (It’s not just loose, it’s positively floppy) may be down to Phil Collins. If it is YOU’RE STILL NOT FORGIVEN.

I love the bass playing on Third Uncle. It starts with 1 bass note that gradually gets echoed as the manic scratch rhythm and clattering percussion take over. There’s an 8 note bass run that seems to come out of nowhere and goes straight back there. He only does it twice but to my (bass players) ears it just seems to crank up the song far more than seems possible. And then there’s the one note again …but dropped down lower and flatter. And the only vocal line that stands out is “I thought it was you”

Put A Straw Under Baby has an impossibly woozy feel, with scraped, discordant string arrangements (Vic Chestnutt or even Junco Pardner from Sandanista). In many ways it’s like a nursery rhyme or one very scary lullaby.

Much is made of Eno’s legendary non-musician status and call me sceptical but I bet he’s picked up a few tricks over the years. By the time he recorded this he’d done the first 2 Roxy Music and his own first 2 solo albums. He’d obviously surrounded himself with some top players but the best trick was to (lets use a soul cliché here, and we might as well because I don’t think there’s any musical clichés on the lp) to get it to sound so wrong but feel so right. This albums 30 years old and it still doesn’t sound like anything else. I’ve been going back to it for 22 years now, and it’s my all time favourite warped pop record ever.