Stars of the Lid – And Their Refinement of the Decline (2007)
By Rafi Mercer
It begins almost imperceptibly: a faint swell of strings, a tone stretched so thin it feels like light diffused through fog. Nothing rushes, nothing insists. The music seems less played than breathed, unfolding at the pace of dusk settling over a horizon. This is And Their Refinement of the Decline, released in 2007 by the American duo Stars of the Lid. At over two hours long, across two discs, it is less an album than an environment — a work that has become one of the most important ambient recordings of the century, redefining what it means to listen slowly.
Stars of the Lid — Adam Wiltzie and Brian McBride — had been refining their craft since the 1990s, but this was their magnum opus. While earlier albums like The Tired Sounds of Stars of the Lid had already stretched ambient music into vast landscapes, Refinement took the process further. No beats. No lyrics. Barely even melody. Instead, elongated tones, processed strings, brass, and guitar loops dissolve into one another until they become fields of sound. The result is music that feels infinite, eternal, both monumental and barely there.
The album opens with “And Their Refinement of the Decline,” a piece that sets the tone with its patience. Strings rise and fall almost imperceptibly, drones shimmer with warmth, silence is treated as an instrument. “Articulate Silences” lives up to its title, where pauses carry as much weight as sound. “The Daughters of Quiet Minds” stretches nearly thirteen minutes, each minute an exercise in stillness, each chord suspended as though the world itself had slowed.
Pieces like “Don’t Bother They’re Here” and “Even If You’re Never Awake” are luminous in their restraint. Others, like “December Hunting for Vegetarian Fuckface” — the wry humour typical of the duo’s titles — carry a weight of melancholy beneath their levity. Across twenty tracks, the duo crafts a space that feels less like music performed and more like atmosphere tuned: a cathedral of drones, a horizon of sound.
What makes Refinement so extraordinary is its paradox: almost nothing happens, yet everything happens. By stripping away rhythm, narrative, and conventional harmony, Stars of the Lid force the listener into slowness, into attention. The shifts are microscopic — a chord fades, a tone darkens, a texture grows grainy — yet within them lies enormous depth. The album is not designed for casual play. It is designed for immersion, for surrender. It rewards patience with revelation.
Culturally, the record cemented Stars of the Lid as central figures in ambient and drone music. It influenced not only ambient producers but also filmmakers, sound designers, and classical composers interested in stasis and atmosphere. In an era of acceleration, their insistence on slowness felt radical. Critics hailed the album as monumental, and listeners found it becoming part of daily ritual: music to work to, to sleep to, to grieve with, to live alongside.
Listening today, its inclusivity is striking. Though abstract, it is deeply human. Its warmth prevents it from being sterile; its tenderness makes it welcoming. Women and men, seasoned experimental listeners or those new to ambient music, all find a place within its sound. It does not gatekeep. It offers space — literal and metaphorical — for reflection, rest, and presence.
On vinyl, the album’s scale becomes ceremony. The four sides demand patience, each side an arc, each flip part of the ritual. The warmth of the pressing deepens the strings, softens the drones, makes the tones almost tactile. The surface crackle becomes part of the texture, like dust caught in sunlight. The cover art, minimal and abstract, mirrors the music’s sense of indefinite expanse.
More than fifteen years on, And Their Refinement of the Decline remains one of the most profound ambient works of our time. It is not music that entertains. It is music that dwells, that accompanies, that reshapes the space you are in. It teaches that listening need not be about event but about presence, that sound can be architecture for stillness, that slowness itself can be radical.
To play it today is to alter your environment. The drones fill the air, silence becomes luminous, time itself seems to stretch. You breathe more slowly. You notice the room differently. And you realise that music can be not only heard but inhabited — that decline, rather than collapse, can be refinement.
Rafi Mercer writes about the spaces where music matters. For more stories from Tracks & Tales, subscribe, or click here to read more.
