The Tired Sounds of Stars of the Lid is the 2001 double album by Brian McBride and Adam Wiltzie, released by Kranky as a two-CD set and a triple LP and lasting a little over two hours. Unable to afford studio time, the duo built much of it at home, McBride in Chicago and Wiltzie in Austin as he prepared to move to Brussels, exchanging DAT tapes by post and coming together for only a couple of shared sessions.
The material layers drones from guitars, samplers and tape loops with cello, brass, piano and harp into slow tidal swells, organised in suites such as Requiem for Dying Mothers and Austin Texas Mental Hospital. Gasfarming borrows a line of dialogue from Twin Peaks, and Fac 21 takes its title from a university classroom. In 2016 Pitchfork ranked it sixth in its list of the greatest ambient albums.