stars of the lid: stereo: glasgow

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

is this it? asked the strokes.  i fielded the same damned question to myself tonight.  i’ve banged on and on for ages about the sheer bloody majesty of last years and their refinement of the decline record.  in my best of 2007 cliche list i had this to say: is it drone?  is it classical?  is it even music asks my dear old mum?  course it is you mad old hag.  it’s like peeling an onion or some such lazy simile. stick with it and it rewards.  like falling asleep in the bath.  or a nicer version of c.i.a. water torture.

i’m still listening to it.  it’s still shedding little dandruffy flakes of hummy harmonic wonderness.  so why, i ask myself over and over like a monkey with a miniature cymbal, was the live experience so yawnsome?  fuck knows i’d wound myself into a mad little frenzy waiting for this gig.

being preceded by the dullest support band i’ve seen in a while certainly didn’t help.

so what bang (or beatless soundscape) did we get for our buck.  we got brian mcbride, adam wiltzie and a trio of ladies on strings from across the pond.  we got some immersive projector work that frankly looked like screensavers.  lazy.  yeah i get it.  it’s microcosms and macrocosms.  its movement, inexorable.  it’s huge in it’s smallness.  it’s voluminous in its quietude.  it’s as uninspired as i felt tonight. 

musically things didn’t improve for me.  like an atonal angelo badelamenti soundtrack drawn out and slowed down to a geological state.  it works on record but i found myself hankering for a quiet room and a seat.  i’m ashamed to admit it yes i’d have loved a goddam chair.  maybe lean back and look up to the open sky, watch the slow suicide of dead stars falling slowlyfast towards me.  it makes sense like this.  not in a bare brick room with lights and bar clattering and metal pipes.  i get the david lynch references but in the surroundings the eraserhead soundtrack seemed more appropriate than twin peaks.

essentially i listened to some pleasant strings with some pleasant swelling drones washing over it.  maybe the minimalism could have been reduced and the volume cranked up a few notches.  i’ve read a few interviews with the fellas and they talk often of the emotion of music that can’t be expressed in words, the affective nature of the beast.  for me that was what i missed.  there didn’t seem to be any bloodsweatortears to the live show.  i’m not suggesting a set of pig destroyer covers.  actually i don’t know what i’m suggesting since everyone else bar me and two friends seemed to be digging the whole thing. maybe i wasn’t tired/drunk/doped enough.  maybe the fact the three of us noticed a chap in the crowd who failed to/swithered about taking his jumper off on the first attempt mid-set says something.  possibly about us.  had to resist the base urges of vocal communication for fear of becoming one of those attendees who talks loudly through gigs.

maybe it was what the kids are calling contemporary classical but i couldn’t help but feel it would’ve worked better in a church or the botanic gardens or even by christ the royal concert hall.

there needs surely to be some form of stimuli otherwise i’m just listening to a record or looking at a painting or the 24 hour tv news channel’s humming away in the background.  there wasn’t much in the way of texture.  it seemed more like one hour and a bit long movement than a selection of pieces.  trouble was there wasn’t much in the way of dynamics or evolution within that hour and a bit, just the gentle swelling, ebbing and flowing of this sonic ocean.  but hell if i wanted that i could go and sit by the shore and watch/listen/experience the sea first hand.

some tracks:

• a meaningful moment through a meaning(less) process
• the atonium part one

man, writing this has put me on a downer.  please buy the records.  they are wonderful.  or go see them live.  please tell me i’m all wrong in the head.

band / label / lidspace

tour dates:

fri may 23 2008 tunnels aberdeen

sat may 24 2008 church of st thomas newcastle

sun may 25 2008 holy trinity church leeds 

---

Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)

• Extreme Misbaha Makeover
• I’m FREE!
• What would you do?
• Sea Wolf Set to Rock ’Twilight’ Concert