Stars of the Lid

Many of you know how deeply attached I am to the music of Stars of the Lid. It's shown quite dramatically in my play counts, and this blog is even titled after one of their compositions. They are performing live at St. Mary's Church on May 3rd. I can't recommend this highly enough --- I had assumed (as did many others) that I would never have an opportunity to see SOTL in person, but what a gift!

I'm just as jaded about contemporary music as the next person --- this is usually true of people who make music, and I'm no exception. Yet I've been listening to SOTL for many years now and can't seem to tire of them. Their music has been the quiet accompaniment to my reveries, anxious night-watches, joyful solitudes, and "aesthetic expeditions". Their sounds have helped me plumb emotional depths I might otherwise never have known. It sounds like hyperbole, but just as the music itself is intrinsically non-verbal, I'm unable to put in to words quite how it's affected me. I am an overly-rational person, and words are my tool, my barrier, and sometimes my weapon. I don't wear my heart on my sleeve, and it's difficult for me to explore or express emotion without filtering it through reason. The language of my shadow-self, then, is relentlessly non-verbal, non-textual --- and it is precisely this language that SOTL's music speaks, fluently and flawlessly.

I hear:
+The beauty of untouched spaces
+Environments to inhabit becoming equally as meaningful as Programs to be read
+Philadelphia
+The sadness of seeing a loved-one hurting
+The ebb and flow of my memories
+The quiet resolve of old love
+"Nocturnal hum"
+Wonder

It's probably also incredibly redundant to say that the Lid is perhaps the single strongest influence on my own music.


Apreludes (in C# major), with visuals, from Stars of the Lid and Their Refinement of the Decline


Live "cover" of Arvo Part's Fratres