Per Aspera Ad Astra

Jon McCafferty, Stars of the Lid | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (November 18, 1998)
• Original Release Date: November 20, 1998
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Kranky
• ASIN: B00000DAKQ
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #56,934 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)
  • #23 in Music > Indie Music > Dance & DJ > Ambient
  • #80 in Music > Indie Music > Dance & DJ > Techno-House

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

It's easy to speak of music in visual terms: line, texture, color. But ambient artists Stars of the Lid have gone a step further, incorporating field recordings of New York experimental line painter Jon McCafferty at work in his studio into their dark, isolationist sound tableaus. This was done as McCafferty painted the album's cover while listening to the band's music. It's an oddly compelling marriage; Stars of the Lid have always suggested the foreboding side of ambient pioneers like Robert Rich or Steve Roach, gliding sheets of tonal texture that evoke hidden spaces and endless corridors. McCafferty's paintings use stain, urethane, and vibrant colors around rich bands of vertical lines, and his titles often contain the Swedish word purl (the sound of water flowing). Using cellos, electric guitars, synthesizers, and other sound sources, Stars of the Lid conjure the common reflective properties of both McCafferty's work and their own. --James Rotondi

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Impressive, March 8, 2007

By 

Mordikai Crump "Mordikai Crump" (Olympia, WA) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Per Aspera Ad Astra (Audio CD)

This is impressive. Truly beautiful music that makes you think of wind blowing through branches during a winter storm, and I offer that hippie sh-t image only to contrast the effigy of what I think of when I hear pop music, i.e., plastic, clear cut space for the new mall, etc.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Adrift in space, January 13, 2002

By 

Roger Fingas (Austin, TX) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Per Aspera Ad Astra (Audio CD)

Per Aspera Ad Astra is a relatively short album (EP?) at just over 40 minutes, but that shouldn't deter you from buying it. This is some of Stars of the Lid's best work - smooth, comforting, but simultaneously a lot more interesting than most of the ambient music it's competing with. It really is evocative of the sky at night, and introduces such radical things as violins and - gasp - percussion into the SotL vocabulary.

Regarding Jon McCafferty's contribution I'd say it isn't terribly noticeable. The album cover is very appropriate for the music contained inside, but the field recordings don't do much besides pique my curiosity about what and how McCafferty was painting at any given moment. There's little synchronicity between the brush strokes and the flow of the music. It doesn't matter much though, because the recordings are intentionally faint and only add to the overall mood of the CD.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Oh, yeah., October 7, 2007

By 

J. Street "jayloo" (Brooklyn, NY) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Per Aspera Ad Astra (Audio CD)

As a massage therapist, this music is a godsend. A friend gave it to me and it instantly became one of my favorites to play, both at work and at home. Recently a client said of it, "Oh, this is my favorite alien-ship-landing album," and totally cracked me up. It's true, it's a wonderful, darkish, spacey album that I can't do without.

Also try Deathprod - Morals and Dogma if you like this. That's a bit darker, and with a theramin, so be warned. But it's amazing, too.