Customer Reviews

Avec Laudenum

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Oh yeah. To me this is unquestionably the best album Stars of the Lid have released so far. Yes, even better than Tired Sounds. As their Website puts it, Avec Laudenum is "pure pass-out material" - unbelievably relaxing. Without, I think, becoming mind-numbingly boring as so many ambient albums can. And I'm an ambient freak!

Style-wise, Avec Laudenum straddles the gap between the guitar-heavy days of The Ballasted Orchestra and the softer, classically-inspired Tired Sounds. Which isn't to say that it lacks guitars, or anything else; it's that the lines blur so much you'll be hard-pressed to tell which sound was made with what. But who cares when it sounds this good!

Incidentally, I think one of the reasons I love this album so much is an old CD-ROM called The Encyclopedia of Space and the Universe. Avec Laudenum is eerily reminscient of that program's background music, so I associate the former with tranquil scenes of spaceflight. Others might not draw that kind of link. Maybe they should, they might enjoy it...

I'm not sure why music like this is so beautiful and amazing to me. Most people now-a-days listen to mainstream music on TV and the radio that makes me sick and laugh at its stupidity. I guess some people could say that listening to Stars of the Lid makes them sick and tired and puts them to sleep but... I respect all musical tastes to a certain degree but I can't seem to stop loving this amazing, ambient music. Their past work is noisier and more droned out but this disc, 'Avec Laudenum' is so amazingly relaxing, pure and rich it just astonishes me with every listen. These are some song synopsis' in chronological order.

THE ATOMIUM (3 prt. suite)
part one : is a slow, french horn beginning followed by a beautiful feeback sort of sound that sweeps into a lovely lulling sound that moves into
part two: which plays for about 10 minutes in this lulling... the lulling begins to silence half way through at about the 5 minute mark and begins to sound very space-like and strange
part three: sort of an explosion into space that Stars of the Lid feed from their zany, beautiful guitars which then totally stops.

DUST BREEDING (1.316)+
A vast vaccum of space and dusty dream textures mixed with an incredible galaxy like feel but so relaxing and so gorgeous. There's absolutely no paranoid feeling in this song it quickly fades to...

I WILL SURROUND YOU
Probably one of Stars of the Lid's best songs. It completely chills and relaxes the mind in sort of a warm, lengthy pattern that picks up and then slowly sleeps at the end which fades...

This is one of SOTL's best discs ever. It was released on the Belgium Sub Rosa label in late 1999 and was rare since now when it was released in the U.S. and Canada on the Kranky Records label (beautiful label-check more for good music.) Buy this CD if you enjoy good music.

This is a magical CD. I insert this CD into the player, turn out the lights, go to bed, and then it's morning. I have an extremely stressful life, and this CD helps transport me into some other place. Perhaps the most remarkable thing is that I have thousands of CDs, of which I tire easily, but this CD remains in my bedside player for months at a time!

A treasure.

I like what another reviewer has said here, which sums this CD up: "what New Age intended but could never reach". Simply put, you either will "get" this, or you won't. It's exotically spacey but goes beyond the normal ambient drone music/garden variety New Age somehow. You put this on the headphones and let it take you to other mental states, better places than your day-to-day existence. And it's quite habit-forming as well: on my first listen to the disc, I switched on the "repeat all" option on my CD player because I knew I wanted this thing to play again when it got to the last track. I will be ordering SoTL's other discs.

at first, when i listened to this, i really didn't know what to thinnk of it. it wasn't as profound as tired sounds... but wasn't guitar-heavy as the ballasted orchestra. so i basically put this record aside for a while, untill recently listening to it, and it ranks as my favorite SOTL album so far. any instruments are indistinguishable is this cd, it's just more of a "space" oriented cd, and much, much more mysterious than their other releases. so, i'd recomend other albums for SOTL if your getting into them, but once you've gotten used to them, get this.

One of the best ambient CD's I've heard in the past 10 years. Only Tim Hecker's Harmony In Ultraviolet is in the same league. Some pieces are similar to Hecker, but this work is much more minimalist than his.

The best of this type of music usually create a sense of "floating bliss." This is no exception. This is a surreal, gorgeous journey that you simply MUST take. If you come anywhere near liking this genre, you gotta get this. Worth it at any price.

I have enjoyed ambient music for several years now and thought I was quite the aficionado...until I heard some wonderful drones percolating through the conversation at a party not long ago. Needless to say, Stars of the Lid were way under my radar,and had to be checked out. Well this stuff is a revelation. Seriously gorgeous music and quite different from other ambient music I have. Best analogy is Palestrina or Tallis without the voices, filtered through electro-acoustic wizardry. I had this CD on through headphones after an overseas flight and fell into a blissful, dreamless coma for an hour and a half. Could have sworn I had slept for a day. Asleep or wide awake, this gets my enthusiastic recommendation.

Dutifully treading their own musical path forged largely from various media samples, heavily processed guitars and other melodic instruments (not to mention a totally agreeable absence of percussion and vocals) Adam Wiltzie and Brian McBride give us Avec Laudenum, their fifth and final album of the 90s. Continuing onward as what must be the next logical step for Stars of the Lid's stellar career as innovators, this particular body of work finds the Austin-based duo trailing even further off into their own sedative realm where nearly all points of relativity toward the outside world have been cut off. Indeed the music found on Avec Laudenum proves to be the most minimal statement of all compared with anything they've crafted before or since. The track numbers are few with each extensive movement elaborating at its own pace seamlessly as always, so much so that the time honored tradition of listeners cherry-picking which particular cut stands tallest becomes moot. In fact, the best way to approach it all, not only in regards to this specific album or group but when taking on the ambient genre as a whole, is to simply let the sound flow with plenty of time given for absorption. Experience the album in passive listening as a backdrop for whatever daily routines your life necessitates or if you're the audiophile type who must hear it all up close and personal just don't bother waiting around for some catchy part to kick in because this stuff is as far removed as possible from the pop world or any other recognizable form of music. Soundtrack for sleep? Maybe. A calming backdrop that will prove cerebrally pleasing for all those subjected? Absolutely.

If you are into ambient music and wonder how much slower the music can get while still remaining interesting, you have come to the right place. Laudanum is tincture of opium. This is music that will slow down your mental processes as if you have taken laudanum. Now, some people will find this very boring - they haven't been ear trained by other ambient music to enjoy this sort of stuff. Other people will be pleasantly surprised that there is something new in the ambient genre. Slow - moves and changes at a glacial pace, but it does move and change, in clever, unexpected ways. Imagine five minutes of music played at a tenth of its normal speed through a computer, this will give you an idea of what is going on here. I have fallen asleep many times listening to this. I have also been lulled into a very relaxing alert state which was similar to meditation. Need a quiet spot to chill in? Get this album!

Nice but has to be the "right time" to listen to this one. Not your normal New Age style.