Adam Wiltzie – Eleven Fugues for Sodium Pentathol – Album Review
by Killian Laher

This is Adam Wiltzie’s first released material since the sad passing of Brian McBride.  For fans of Stars of the Lid, it’s the closest we’ll get to a new album from that band.

Great big doomy sounds introduce Buried at Westwood Memorial Park, In An Unmarked Grave, To The Left of Walter Matthau, a track which takes you on something of a journey filled with ambient swirls for eight and a half minutes. One to get absolutely lost in.  Tissue of Lies is a little more conventional, with little peals of electric guitar like the sun breaking over ice, and is more digestible at just under three and a half minutes.  Pelagic Swell features scraping strings, Stock Horror features growls of static. Dim Hopes is a blissed-out palette cleanser midway through the album.

The orchestral As Above Perhaps So Below builds slowly, before Mexican Helium does what the title suggests, floating aimlessly yet beautifully
We Were Vaporised is the most traditional drone, Stars of the Lid type track, of the chilly, doomy variety and the final track (Don’t Go Back to) Boogerville has the customary Star of the Lid amusing title disguising a strong if short orchestral piece.

It’s probably not going to convert you if you’re not used to this sort of thing, but it’s as fine an ambient album as you’ll hear this year.

Tissue of Lies