And Their Refinement Of The Decline

I can confidently say that this is some of the most astonishingly beautiful music being made today.

This album is a swirl of pure emotions and grandiosity, but is never overbearing, never feeling like anything more than your own personal score. Thus, it’s completely brilliant.

It's an awesome thing, this album, and anyone, virtually anyone who encounters it will be in some way moved by the impure music it contains.

Their work, especially that displayed on Refinement, stands as some of the more original and evocative music being produced today, smart and technical without sacrificing atmosphere and feeling.

This stripping down and moving away from easily definable mood makes And Their Refinement of the Decline a bit harder to grasp initially than any previous SOTL record.

Call it music for lucid dreaming, call it music for daydreams, or call it music for simply strolling in the dusk, this is another album that will stretch time and take you to another place.

The listener who comes away from the two-hour experience of …And Their Refinement of Decline without becoming a bit misty at least once is too hardened for my friendship.

If nothing else, Stars of the Lid have achieved Adam's goal of making music "to really relax to," abjectly defying intent listening, laying waste to the established vocabulary of music production and appreciation.

This double-album is just as hypnotic, just as overwhelming, and awesome enough to win over a new battalion sleepyheads for the next six years and beyond.

Stars of the Lid and Their Refinement of the Decline is a return to the same blissful twilight as before, virtually unpaused.

And Their Refinement of the Decline is a nearly two-hour opus that at times dares us to deny that it can, in fact, be classified as music. That spirit in Stars of the Lid is commendable--even if it makes for a project that often seems more an experiment in deconstruction than an attempt at creating a universally enjoyable listen.