A Winged Victory For The Sullen

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5...according to our Phil on Thu 08 Sep, 2011.

Here's a dream marriage in floaty heaven! Adam Wiltzie from Stars of The Lid and Dustin O'Halloran have a new thing and this is it. Initially it sounds like how you'd expect it to sound. O'Halloran tinkling away on the old ivories and Wiltzie making some orchestral majestic sounding drones in the background. So far so good. At times it goes all Icelandic but that could be Hildur Gudnadottir who throws his cello all over it (you've also got Peter Broderick on there, fact fans!). The drones are very much in the vein of the last Stars of The Lid album (And Their Refinement), ie. they're very orchestral and grand sounding and essentially totally epic. Over that you've got O'Halloran's emotive playing and the two together work hand in hand like a pair of hands holding hands. It's beautiful, maudlin, soul searching, emotive and everything else you'd expect it to be. My only regret is that we've had a promo of this around the office or ages and I didn't spot it and now I've heard it I think it's fucking ace. Fans of Johann Johannsson and of course Dustin O'Halloran and Stars of The Lid will 100% totally love this doozie of an album!!

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'A Winged Victory For The Sullen' is the first installment of the new collaboration between Stars Of The Lid member Adam Wiltzie and L.A. composer Dustin O'Halloran. The duo agreed to leave the comfort zone of their home studios and develop the recordings with the help of large acoustic spaces, hunting down a selection of 9ft grand pianos that had the ability to deliver extreme sonic low end. Other traditional instrumentation was used including string quartet, French horn, and bassoon, but always juxtaposed is the sound of drifting guitar washed melodies. The recordings began with one late night session in the famed Grunewald Church in Berlin on a 1950s imperial Bösendorfer piano and strings were added in the historic East Berlin DDR radio studios along the River Spree. One last session on a handmade Fazioli piano in a private studio on the Northern cusp of Italy, before the final mixes took place in a 17th century villa near Ferrara with the assistance of Francesco Donadello. All songs were then processed completely analogue straight to magnetic tape. Their secret to harvesting new melodic structures from the thin air of existence was for the duo to push themselves to dangerous territory, realising that clear thinking at the wrong moment could stifle the compositions. The final result is seven landscapes of harmonic ingemination. In 'Requiem For The Static King Part One' - created in memory of the untimely passing of Mark Linkous - they have taken the age-old idea of a string quartet and then shot it out of a cannon to reveal exquisite new levels of sonic bliss. Of the 13 minute track 'Symphony Pathétique', Wiltzie says 'after almost 20 years of struggling to create interesting ambient drone music, I feel like I have finally figured out what I am doing'. Notable guest musicians include Icelandic cellist Hildur Gudnadottir, as well as Erased Tapes label comrade Peter Broderick on violin. A Winged Victory For The Sullen is not a side project - it is the future of the late night record you have always dreamed of.

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