Apr
22
“Contemporary SOTL is present and absent in equal measure in their introduction to the world, the album’s opener “Before Top Dead Center.” Birthed into the world by a very steady finger on a Yamaha 4-track fader, the seemingly endless fade-in is an establishing shot of two heavily processed chords over wobbly, flickering low-end, perhaps a by-product of Adam Wiltzie’s guitar pedal. (Co-Star Brian McBride didn’t pick up a guitar until the group’s next record, and he lords over tapes here.) Beyond the rough edges of the mid-fi recording, what’s unusual about “Before Top Dead Center” are certain frequencies that the duo hadn’t yet learned how to deal with; at points, Music for Nitrous Oxide can almost set your teeth on edge with a hard-to-pinpoint tension. (“(Live) Lid,” while sort of pretty in its gapless intensity, also feels obnoxious and unyielding, the only SOTL song that’s actually woken me up.) It’s a kind of feedback disharmony too rich to be simply wrong, and one they’d learn how avoid or sublimate on future releases. Maybe they were short a pedal?”
Dusted Reviews: Stars of the Lid - Music for Nitrous Oxide
Dusted reviews the reissue of Stars of the Lid’s 1994 debut.
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