By the timecame out, McBride had moved to Chicago, and Wiltzie was in the process of moving to Brussels. In Austin, they had often worked separately, recording at home and bringing ideas to each other for further development. Now, unable to meet up regularly, they exchanged DAT tapes through the post, slowly piecing these missives together until they became large-scale structures. This way of working suited them. After ten years in the same place, they trusted each other enough to take their time and to give honest feedback."When we give each other things, little bits and pieces or sometimes more fleshed out ideas, nowadays there's never an expectation that the next day or even the next week that you're going to respond," says McBride. "It's not like a business relationship. There's not a deadline where you have to listen instantly and get back because there's a meeting that's coming up. You want to listen in the right place, the right time. I don't think either one of us has the assumption that the other one presses play as soon as something shows up in their inbox.""The word 'slow' is very much part of our vocabulary," says Wiltzie. "And 'distance,' too. The distance we have, these oceans and continents that separate us. It's almost like slowing down time or something. It's fine. I think we just decided a long time ago, when it gets done it gets done."was Stars Of The Lid's sixth album in six years. After that, their output slowed considerably. Wiltzie says the noise surrounding that record was hard to ignore, and he felt like "the world just needed another one immediately." Instead, they took some time off. Both worked on other projects, and only came together to play thematerial live. The shift in instrumentation on the record had forced them to reconsider their usual live setup, and after posting an ad on MySpace looking for players, they brought a small string section on the road with them. This changed the dynamic of their live performances completely."I remember folks coming up to us after a performance and saying, 'I didn't think that you could do it,'" says McBride. "They didn't think you could translate what was on the record to a live context. I think that's a testament to the fact that there is some structure going on. Even if we can't perfectly approximate a lot of the stuff that's going on, the fidelity of what happens on the record, it is possible to at least emulate some of that structure. So a song like 'Requiem For Dying Mothers' is something that we can play and play at a close approximation to the actual recording, even though it's always going to be a little bit different."It took the pair six years to follow up—once again, they were working separately and slowly.is another two-hour album of beautiful ambient music. At first it might not seem so different from its predecessor, but the key to the record is its title. The album is a refined version of an ongoing process—prettier, more stark, more still than their previous work. The guitar has become largely unrecognisable, still present but reduced to a pure wash of tone and colour. The piano sits way back in the mix. There's a greater confidence to the arrangements, which are more patient, more ambiguous than before. The track titles, which had always been a bulwark against them taking their work too seriously, are even funnier than usual. "Dopamine Clouds Over Craven Cottage" (a reference to the other Brian McBride, a professional footballer previously of Fulham FC), "That Finger On Your Temple Is The Barrel Of My Raygun," and the final, defining statement of "December Hunting For Vegetarian Fuckface," actively undercut any would-be pretensions, marrying their gorgeous music to uncouth titles.Despite their monumental length and abstract sounds, bothandsold well. Their music soundtracked everything from yoga classes to pre-natal listening sessions. A group of Australian science fiction authors apparently listened towhile at work on their books. By the end of 2007,was on course to being the most highly-rated record of the year, according to online review aggregator Metacritic, as it earned itself a massively positive consensus among indie music critics atand. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this resulted in a backlash."There were a bunch of people who rushed to reviewing the record and giving it a bad review, which would slide us down the Metacritic line," says McBride, laughing at the memory. "That's something that I actually kind of enjoy about the music. I like that it doesn't invoke ambivalence. Either people really view it as something that's important, or they hate it, they don't think it's music at all. I think that kind of policing of what was going to be the top-rated record of the year was sort of an indication that something was going on, that maybe it was at least big enough to have to respond to."Though they have continued to play live together, various other projects and jobs have been keeping the pair busy since. Now fully settled in Brussels, Wiltzie has become a full-time composer, working on his own music, film scores and commercial projects. His main pursuit over the last few years has been A Winged Victory For The Sullen, an orchestral project with Berlin-based composer Dustin O'Halloran. Earlier this year they performed at the Royal Albert Hall as part of the BBC's Proms season, a show that Wiltzie describes as "one of the best we ever had." That the same act can play both Boiler Room and the Proms in the space of a few months proves Wiltzie's point that traditionally classical environments are opening up to musicians from less traditional backgrounds."It takes time, it takes a bit of coddling and maybe now we're reaching a point where people are beginning to accept it a little bit more," he says. "In general, the classical music world, it's very insular and it's taken them time to realise. And part of it is maybe they realise that their gene pool, or their audience, is getting old and they're going to die soon. They have to find a way to bring in more people. In a sense, the curators, like Edward who runs the Proms, are realising we really need to breathe some new life in, to bring in new people, because you can't just play to empty houses. You need this interaction with the public."In Los Angeles, McBride works with students at the University Of Southern California as a debate coach. Having been a champion debater himself in Austin, he has spent most of his adult life working in the field, coaching and judging competitions. It's a demanding job, one he says will "take all it can from you, and be unapologetic about it," though a good group of students can make the "creative repression" worthwhile. With both Stars Of The Lid and Bell Gardens, the gauzy pop project he does with Kenneth James Gibson, he's begun to think about making music a full-time occupation. For now though, the balance between work and music remains "a constant struggle.""It's great in the sense that it is at an academic pace, which does afford me the ability to maintain a creative life, and it does give me days and weeks where I don't have to concentrate on debate," he says. "Do I like it? Nah, man, at times I don't. I fucking hate it to be perfectly honest. It's a weird thing. It is the exact opposite of what Stars Of The Lid is. It is literally the exact opposite in every way. There are tons of words, debaters speak at a very, very rapid rate. It is very, very rational and Stars Of The Lid is the exact opposite of that. In previous interviews I've said either that means I'm balanced or I'm bi-polar, I don't really know which."Eight years on from their last record, Wiltzie and McBride are still surprised that so many people are interested in what they do, and that they're able to pursue this path in their lives. As Wiltzie says, "It's only a certain segment of society that can even have any sort of enjoyment out of what we're doing." With so many ongoing projects and some new Stars Of The Lid material in the pipeline for next year, neither McBride nor Wiltzie are eager to spend too much time looking backwards, but the re-issues ofandhave given them an opportunity to take stock and to remember."It's bittersweet for sure," says McBride. "I actually just saw my ex-wife, who was the woman I was married to in Chicago at that time. I was just down in Austin for a couple of weeks, and I don't really talk to her very much, that's not the kind of relationship that we have. That's sort of what it brings me back to. It starts, obviously, with the setting—our studio in the largest room of our house. Those images mutate into who I was with, and not just who I was with, but Cherie. Those were great times and they seem very far away right now. I don't revisit those thoughts much, so it's nice I guess, if the reissue is bringing me back to remembering something that I'd pushed away. That's OK. I'm alright with that."I used to be able to want to transport myself into my older body and observe what life was like, or be a fly on the wall for your younger self, to see if I interacted with the world differently. I've kind of given up on that. I think it's better to not compare and to be OK in the present in some way. I know that sounds very California, but fuck it."