Village of Stars

Village Of The Sun is an enigmatic collaboration between UK jazz virtuosos Binker Golding & Moses Boyd and electronic music legend Simon Ratcliffe of Basement Jaxx fame.

In the small English village of Midwich everybody and everything falls into a deep, mysterious sleep for several hours in the middle of the day. Some months later every woman capable of child-bearing is pregnant and the children that are born out of these pregnancies seem to grow very fast and they all have the same blond hair and strange, penetrating eyes that make people do things they don't want to do.

Celebrated guitarists Mary Halvorson (Code Girl) and John Dieterich (Deerhoof) announce their debut collaborative album, a tangle of stars. The album is a collection of new instrumental songs spanning experimental jazz, pop, rock, noise, and improvisation, all of which were composed, arranged, and recorded over three days at Dieterichs home studio in Albuquerque, NM.

In the beginning of the 19th century, Johannes Elias Alder is born in a small village in the Austrian mountains. While growing up he is considered strange by the other villagers and discovers his love to music, especially to playing the organ at the local church. After experiencing an "acoustic wonder", his eye color changes and he can hear even the most subtle sounds. Elias falls in platonic love with Elsbeth, the sister of Peter, a neighbor's son, who has loving feelings towards Elias ever since. After Elsbeth marries someone else, Elias (aged 22) decides to end his life by not sleeping anymore.

In Tuscan lore, the evening of August 10th is la notte di san lorenzo (the night of the shooting stars). Each of these stars is believed to grant one wish. In this celebrated film by Italy's Taviani brothers, a woman asks for the words to tell her son about that same night during the last days of World War II. The Nazis occupied Italy and the fascists had mined her small Tuscan village of San Martino. Skeptical of the fascists' promise that all peasants will be safe in San Martino's cathedral, a group of villagers opt to leave and search for the Italian partisans and advancing American forces. Among those to depart is the woman, then only six years old. La Notte di San Lorenzo is the story of the villagers' remarkable exodus, the fate of those left behind, and the partisan struggle against fascism – lyrically intertwined with their thoughts, loves, fears, and memories, as well as the fantasies of a young girl experiencing the tragedy she perceives to be her greatest adventure.

"Stars of the Lid may have released two of the most important and influential ambient-drone albums of the 21st century, inspiring generations of musicians, authors, artists, and filmmakers, developing a cult following and near-mythic status, but back in 1995 they were nowhere. Well, not exactly nowhere, they were in Austin, Texas, to be precise, a city that Adam Wiltzie describes as a “rock and roll village, mostly… We were 100% in a vacuum and there was absolutely nobody that even remotely enjoyed what we were doing.”