Ah, the Luminaire – that most peculiar of venues, designed so that if an event sells out only about 25% of the people attending will see anything at all.  Armed in advance with this knowledge, particularly in light of the fact that this was Stars of the Lid’s first London show in around 6 (six) years, you would of course decide to get there pretty sharpish and park your bum on the steps down the front.

Which would mean you get to see a couple of pretty decent support bands, starting with Rameses III.  A more portable SOTL, featuring soporific drones (it was Monkeyman’s turn to fall asleep) from guitar, keyboard and bowed strings.  Some prerecorded voices seeped through the rolling notes, in case those coming from the those just arriving and heading barwards weren’t loud enough.

Kranky’s Boduf Songs were next, with their brand of vaguely menacing hush-folk.  Guitarists brushed tentatively at strings whilst the singer whispered about poisoning, breaking arms, and (most alarmingly, given the ongoing wheat shortage) causing my crops to fail.  A cover of Leonard Cohen’s “First We Take Manhattan” was delivered with a sense of quiet desperation, so quiet in fact that the hum coming from the speaker a foot from my head threatened to devour it like a swarm of locusts.

And so to that long-awaited SOTL performance.  Brian McBride and Adam Wiltzie were joined by a string trio of violin, viola and cello in order to augment their drones, resulting in an extremely rich and satisfying sound.  The strings were cued in by Wiltzie, who also triggered some vocal samples in between constructing pedal-heavy guitar crescendos and prodding at his MPC - during the third long piece, the charmingly titled “December Hunting For Vegetarian Fuckface”, his low notes filled the room deliciously, and I looked around to a room of eyes either closed or glazed.  The emotional pull of the music was irresistible, and was lightened only before the encore by someone requesting that SOTL play the music from Twin Peaks.

The small gap between the Luminaire’s low ceiling and the heads of the tall people in the crowd precluded most of the projections from making it to the screen, but the predictable selection of rippling water, screensaver-like patterns and slo-mo super-8 images may not have added much to the experience.  What would have added to the experience was this: a big room full of giant beanbags which would have swallowed us up as we reclined, half asleep, wondering about how our crops are bearing up…

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