A Winged Victory for the Sullen

Strings, piano and tape

A Winged Victory for the Sullen are Adam Wiltzie, founder of Stars of the Lid, who lives in Brussels, and the pianist and film composer Dustin O'Halloran, formerly of Devics. The name comes from the Hellenistic sculpture the Winged Victory of Samothrace in the Louvre. They met in 2007, when Wiltzie was touring Italy with Sparklehorse and the engineer Francesco Donadello introduced them; they first worked on one song for a compilation and decided early it would not be a one-off. After O'Halloran sent a track, Wiltzie suggested he come over for a couple of days and see what happened, and within two days they had five initial ideas.

The debut album was recorded in six European studios from 2009 to 2011, including the Grunewald Church and the former East German radio studios DDR P4 Funkhaus in Berlin and the Begijnhof in Brussels, and mixed by Donadello in a villa near Ferrara, fully analogue to magnetic tape. It came out on Erased Tapes on September 8, 2011, with Kranky in North America. They scored the Wayne McGregor dance piece Atomos, premiered at Sadler's Wells on October 9, 2013, with an album in October 2014, then the French film Iris (2016 or 2017), The Undivided Five (Ninja Tune, November 1, 2019), Invisible Cities (February 26, 2021) and the All Our Friends Are Vampires EP (March 14, 2023).

Wiltzie is ambivalent about playing live but finds it therapeutic, and their first North American tour ran thirteen dates from October 29, 2011 with the American Contemporary Music Ensemble. Later dates include the Barbican in London on May 14, 2023. Wiltzie prefers other or harmonic robitussin to ambient, and told MusicRadar that if he cannot fall asleep to a piece he has written it does not make the record.