Music for Nitrous Oxide reveals Stars of the Lid's chemical makeup in its rawest and most basic form.
All of Brian McBride's and Adam Wiltzie's obsessions are here: droning guitar feedback, garbled voice transmissions, and patient compositions unafraid to stretch past the ten-minute mark.
This debut effort shows the scars of their primitive home-recording setup, but like the best four-track music, apparent technological shortcomings are turned into the record's advantage.
The blurry, out-of-focus feedback drones blend wonderfully with the ambient noise of the living room and the fuzzy layer of distortion imparted by the analog cassette.
Stars of the Lid acknowledge how well their music works in this environment by titling a track "Tape Hiss Makes Me Happy." Probably the darkest record in the band's catalog, there is an apocalyptic edge to Music for Nitrous Oxide that owes something to the disembodied voices floating through the tracks.
"Lagging" is haunted by snatches of dialogue from a war zone news broadcast, while "Down" pulls the voice of a Texas faith healer from the AM radio airwaves.
They would go on to refine and perfect their drone aesthetic (and make much prettier music), but Music for Nitrous Oxide shows that Stars of the Lid had some great ideas from the beginning.
| Title/Composers | Performer | Listen | Time | Size | Size | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Before Top Dead Center | Stars of the Lid | Play | 05:23 | 12 MB | 22 MB |
| 2 | Adamord | Stars of the Lid | Play | 11:51 | 27 MB | 55 MB |
| 3 | Madison | Stars of the Lid | Play | 09:28 | 21 MB | 36 MB |
| 4 | Down | Stars of the Lid | Play | 06:32 | 14 MB | 28 MB |
| 5 | Lagging | Stars of the Lid | Play | 03:54 | 8 MB | 14 MB |
| 6 | (Live) Lid | Stars of the Lid | Play | 09:44 | 22 MB | 54 MB |
| 7 | Tape Hiss Makes Me Happy | Stars of the Lid | Play | 13:04 | 29 MB | 66 MB |
| 8 | The Swellsong | Stars of the Lid | Play | 09:14 | 21 MB | 40 MB |
| 9 | Goodnight | Stars of the Lid | Play | 07:12 | 16 MB | 35 MB |
| 76 mins | 174 MB | |||||
| 76 mins | 353 MB | |||||
| Artist | Job | |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Stars of the Lid | Primary Artist |
| Quality | Format | Encoding | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| Standard | MP3 | 320kps 44.1kHz | MP3 is an audio coding format which uses a form of lossy data compression. The highest bitrate of this format is 320kbps (kbit/s). MP3 Digital audio takes less amount of space (up to 90% reduction in size) and the quality is not as good as the original one. |
| CD Quality | FLAC | 16bit 44.1kHz | FLAC is an audio coding format which uses lossless compression. Digital audio in FLAC format has a smaller size and retains the same quality of the original Compact Disc (CD). |