As one half of Stars of the Lid, Brian McBride has contributed to the essential drift music of our time. "When the Detail Lost its Freedom" was recorded mainly on an ASR X keyboard sampler. The instruments recorded were guitar, piano, vocals, harmonica, trumpet and strings. There were no synthesizers or keyboards used in the creation of the album. There's a lot of sampling in the sense of capturing a tone, isolating its tuning, and playing it on the keys of a piano. Guitars become piano-esque. Room noise becomes room noise played on a keyboard. And you can actually make out some guitars. "When the Detail Lost its Freedom" is a collection of individual pieces and therefore released from the Lid's uninterrupted architecture. The album was recorded somewhere in between Los Angeles and Chicago, always at home, in random moments of duress over the last four years.

"It's a lovely album..." - Harold Budd