Photo by Angela Goodman

Brian McBride and Adam Wiltzie have been crafting ambient symphonies under the Stars Of The Lid banner for well over a decade now. Stars Of The Lid’s latest album for Kranky, And Their Refinement Of The Decline, continues to develop the classical tendencies of 2001’s acclaimed The Tired Sounds Of. I recently had the opportunity to field questions to Brian McBride, who performed a solo set in New York City last month to close out the 2006 – 2007 Wordless Music Series.

McBride has lived in Los Angeles for several years now while Wiltzie resides in Belgium. They pieced together their new album by sending each other ideas by way of computer. I wanted to know how SOTL makes this work. McBride explains, “I can say that it helps if each of the artists are motivated. You have to send stuff back and forth on a regular basis. You often need deadlines. You gotta talk about what you like and don’t like no matter how abstract and obtuse it is. Talking about the minutiae of music is real difficult from far away especially with our music. The most comical thing in the world is for us to try to describe certain sounds that we like to the other person.”

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Stars Of The Lid on the big screen. Sounds pretty good, no? ZF Films agrees. Here’s a teaser for their SOTL feature film which they promise to bring to the masses in 2010. I don’t want to wait that long.

I believe it is safe to assume this film will feature footage from the recent SOTL world tour, but I have contacted the filmmakers for further info. By the way, SOTL has three dates lined up this fall:

Tour
11/20/08 – Hamden, CT – The Space
11/21/08 – New York, NY – Le Poisson Rouge
11/23/08 – Boston, MA – The Regent Theatre (Brainwaves Festival)

Stars Of The Lid’s Brian McBride has joined forces with producer Kenneth James Gibson to form Bell Gardens. The duo are working on an album that Gibson describes as “a new heady, classical, pop record” that contains “lots of vocals, strings, horns.” I know that isn’t much information, but I’ll try to dig up more. Until then, you can visit their MySpace page to listen to five rough mixes and form your own opinion. Listen to “To Land.” The strings sound great. It is wonderful to hear McBride tackle more straightforward material while retaining his classical influences.