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Notes
Released 18 Nov 1998
From "You're with Stupid" by Bruce Adams: "In the fall of 1995, Stars of the Lid were on tour opening for an Austin band called Bedhead. They were approached by a painter named Jon McCafferty, who told the duo that he often listened to their music while painting. McCafferty contributed a painting to cover art by alt-rock titans R.E.M. A long-dis-rance collaboration ensued, with McCafferty recording himself painting and Adam Wiltzie incorporating the resulting sounds into Stars of the Lid compositions. The resulting album was titled Per Aspera Ad Astra, attributed to Stars of the Lid and Jon McCafferty and released on kranky in November 1998. As the band put it in the liner notes on the inside of the gatefold cover, which featured a McCafferty painting with the title embossed into the cardboard CD sleeve and LP jacket: "The merging of color and sound is something we've thought about quite often.
Why should the visual artist be confined to the packaging while the 'musician' is in charge of the rest-especially when both dimensions may reflect back into each other." In addition to Adam Wiltzie and Brian McBride, Sara Nelson contributed cello to the recordings. Steve Ciabattoni wrote in the CMJ New Music Report, "The humming harmony of cellos on 'Anchor States: Part One' provides the boldest strokes; but elsewhere the soft blurs of sound suggest ultra-slow-motion close-ups of a brush thick with paint sliding across a virgin can-vas." In addition to the principals' guitars, tapes, and synthesiz-ers, stars of the Lid were exploring more instrumental options. Brian McBride believes that "it was just in us. I spent the majority of my childhood life listening to my father playing his classical music through the walls of my bedroom. I think I've always had these muted diver's tones within me." This would eventually result in the integration of string sections and horns into Stars of the Lid recordings and performances and the bandbecoming connected with the nascent 'neo-classical' musical genre."