As I am focusing these days on coding up a python script to transfer my YouTube playlists to Spotify, this ambient Sunday will be shorter than usual. I would still like to share my favorite ambient artists of all time: Stars of the Lid. While they will definitely get more spotlight in a later article, I would like to share probably one of their lesser known albums: Avec Laudenum. Originally released on Sub Rosa, it was reissued in 2006 on Kranky Records, a label I have digged through and through after finding about it, as they notably host artists like Loscil, Tim Hecker or Bowery Electric.

Stars of the Lid - Avec Laudenum (1999)

Avec Laudenum’s first track, Atomium, is very special to me. It usually overflows me with emotions, mostly sad, or at least nostalgic. Nostalgia is a highly recurring feeling to me, it holds a lot of space in my head, especially at times where I feel depressed. This track allows me to put this nostalgia into music form, it is an escape, it is the vocabulary my mind was missing to express it. Never forget that language is a lossy compression format, some of the nuances of your thoughts will never fit within the somewhat blunt categories of the words you know. It was an important realization that having access to this music, taking time to express these feelings explicitly is a huge privilege; as it helped me set them away to truly embrace the happy times, and avoid an everlasting gray mood. Anyway, I am no psychologist or psychiatrist, to each their own; I at least hope you enjoy this music as much as I do.