How Stars of the Lid Made Two Ambient Masterworks

Brian McBride: I remember in the 2000s, I guess like the early portion of the decade, reading things and seeing our name being used as an adjective, which I thought was kind of weird. One of the things I started to notice was that when we would play some shows, different kinds of groups of people that I didn’t even know were groups would sort of come out of the woodwork and say that they listen to the music. Like a group of science fiction writers or people at yoga studios or new parents. I don’t really expect anybody to listen to the music, to be perfectly honest.

Wiltzie: When Tired Sounds was released in 2001, that was before the iPod was out. So, you know, when we got up to Refinement, I think we had all pretty much assumed, “Oh, this one’s gonna probably not sell half as much because the iPod’s out. Back then Mr. Kranky, he’s pretty much the dictionary version of a realist, said, “Well guys, fellas, just don’t count on it. Sales are going to be. . . it’s gonna stink this time.” And that one ended up selling even more.

You recorded both of these records, mainly, apart from one another?
McBride: There was a little bit of being in the same room. I think maybe for Tired Sounds there was twice that we got together?

Wiltzie: I have no idea, it’s too long ago. I would say most of the time we work more by ourselves than together.

McBride: For Tired Sounds I was in Chicago, and back in those days we used to send DAT tapes to each other in the mail. And, it was sort of a different thing from living in the same place, you know. Being so separated was kind of a good thing because it gave us both time to either think through or ruminate about what the other person had done and be a little more attentive and deliberate with what to do next. . . . Adam was still in Austin but moving to Brussles eventually.

Wiltzie: At the beginning of Tired Sounds I was about to move. Anyway, it’s kind of a hodge-podge of both. We went from the four-track to start recording digitally, so a little bit still has some fuzziness of the early Nineties stuff. . . . By [Refinement] I’d moved to Belgium and he was out in Los Angeles so it’s hard to get much further away.

What sort of environment do you have when you are working on your portion of the music? What do you like your emotional state to be?
McBride: Oh god. I was remembering what Bubba [Kadane] from Bedhead said, like, about you recording in Austin in the middle of the summertime and you sweating over your four-track. If your fans could only see you now.

Wiltzie: In the Austin days, god, that awful heat. I don’t know how people live down there. Sweating over that reel-to-reel four-track, the thing ended up rusting from my sweat build-up in that thing. It wasn’t very glamorous, I can tell you that much.

McBride: I like late at night because there’s no distractions. There’s very little chance there’s gonna be dogs barking. You’re not gonna get phone calls. Working on the music, for me, it’s kind of important to not fake it in some ways, to not try to force this emotional state out of it, to sort of pay attention to what’s going on in your life, if you’re feeling inspired or motivated just letting it happen. Especially after you’ve released a bunch of records for a long time, you don’t want to manufacture longing.