Cobra and Phases Group Play Voltage in the Milky Night - Stereolab

This album was a huge deal for me at the time. I was 13 years old and Amazon was offering free promotional downloads of "The Free Design" and "Op Hop Detonation." I DL'd those two tracks with the 56k dial-up connection and played that shit to death, especially "The Free Design." Bought the album as soon as it came out in fall of 99 and by summer I had acquired most 'lab albums and was fiending for Japanese imports of Krautrock CDs (all you could really get domestically at the time was a few Can albums). Formative, to say the least.

In hindsight, Cobra feels like their grandest statement to me. Non-stop ear candy (electric harpsichord, clavinet, vibes, and marimbas for days) and gorgeous melodies ("Come And Play..." and the mixolydian glow of "Velvet Water" and "Blue Milk" come to mind in particular). 75 minutes of this is a whole lot to take in, and I see how it might be off-putting for someone with an aversion to the sonic palette of 70s library music. I think it could have been even better if a couple of the weaker tracks were swapped with the two best "Free Design" b-sides, "With Friends Like These" and "Escape Pod (From the World of Medical Observations)." Also anyone who digs Cobra should not sleep on First of the Microbe Hunters, which was unfairly neglected in the wake of Cobra getting fucked over by critics.

So I'm voting for "The Free Design," which may or may not be the best song on the album, but has surely had the greatest impact on me personally. Also gotta love that ridiculous "Dancing Queen" trumpet quote in the outro - surely Jim O'Rourke's idea, right?

For me the sound of this album is a little too smoothed out. It's too slick. I think if anything they got a little too "professional" sounding at this stage, like there are a number of points where it's all tastefully arranged trumpets and ridiculously proficient bass playing. My favorite stuff by them always had a looser edge. Even when they tightened things up on stuff like "Ping Pong" there was still a lot of air in there. The production on Cobra feels really suffocating.

no it's good that's it's smooth and slick

Yeah.

How can you hate on tasteful horn arrangements and ridiculously proficient bass playing?

Whoa! I never noticed that Dancing Queen horn quote in The Free Design. Definitely O'Rourke

I think it's O'Hagan TBH.

Could be, but O'Rourke has gone on record calling Dancing Queen one of his favorite songs:
http://stevestate.blogspot.com/2006/07/visiting-this-planet.html

flappy bird, I'm glad you found that live collection, cool to see it still has some life. It was put together over 15 years ago by Stereolab forum members

this is a sweet cover version by Mifune

https://open.spotify.com/track/1fX95f0Gm8L2Q29Rcr8XpU

I think it's definitely O'Rourke - he recorded the track, arranged the horns, and yeah Dancing Queen is one of his favorite songs ever.

O'hagan did the brass arrangements, not O'rourke, fwiw

maybe I misread something

That's how I'm reading it, but I looked into the Abba connection and can't find anything suggestion O'Hagan is a fan, whereas O'Rourke seems to talk about "Dancing Queen" in quite a few places.

Fab Four Suture may be Stereolab on autopilot but it still has the magic-eye seeing puzzle like "Kyberneticka Babicka", "Interlock" and "Excursions Into Oh-A-Oh" which is one of the few latter day Stereolab tracks to actually rock.

"Exercusions Into Oh-A-Oh" is definitely the highlight.

^ totally agree. Also happy to see you're into Sound Dust, very underrated abum

So, I've decided to give this a quick re-listen to see if I've missed anything, and nope, it's exactly the same as I remember it being, overly slick and quite samey from top to bottom and it's failing to excite me in the way that Mars Audiac Quintet or Emperor Tomato Ketchup do... although the breakdown on 'Italian Shoes Continuum' is quite nice.

Anyway, voting for 'Puncture in the Radax Permutation', which strikes me as being the painfully obvious highlight.

Didn´t know about this extended version of Blue Milk.

Turrican OTM

xp whoa thanks for finding that! yeah extended Blue Milk is not on youtube afaik, and vinyl copies with it are v expensive

It's a shame that one has to listen for roughly about 8 and a half minutes before 'Blue Milk' generates any excitement.

I sold this album and Dots and Loops a while ago. I ripped them first, and the 3 songs mentioned by Ross at the top of the thread are all in my library, but I can't remember how any of them go.

It's a shame because I had the chance to see Stereolab around this time and passed it up because I wasn't a fan of this period but I never saw them again. In fact I only saw them once around ETK time.

Just realised I've never even heard Margerine Eclipse or Fab Four Suture (didn't even know the latter existed!). I will rectify that at some point.

Margerine Eclipse is the only Stereolab album that's managed to choke me up a little... "Feel and Triple"

Maybe worth noting that there's a "Blaue Milch" on the Peter Thomas Warp Back to Earth compilation – I forget what the connection is between the two "Blue Milk" versions.

good god they released SO much

just checked out First of the Microbe Hunters the other day, whew. so good. "Outer Bongolia"!

First of the Microbe Hunters was actually the first Stereolab I bought, and then worked my way backwards. Was weird to then read about everyone seemed to prefer earlier material, because I loved all of the new stuff right away.

Also "Kyberneticka Babicka" is amazing. One of my favorite songs by them.

Yeah Microbe Hunters is almost as good as Cobra. "Household names" is a huge favorite of mine.

The last song is great too, can't remember what it's called.

"Retrograde Mirror Form." Beautiful outro.

i can't get over the chords in 'Fuses'

love this documentary from 2000, sweet pro-shot show with interview bits in-between

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbVk5aXheLM

Miss Modular
French Disko
Blips, Drips & Strips
Infinity Girl
Rainbow Conversation
Come and Play in the Milky Night
Escape Pod
Metronomic Underground
Des Étoiles Élétroniques
Analogue Rock
Blue Milk

wow, never seen this before, this was my favorite line up for live Stereolab

another new video uploaded from the Cobra and Phases tour

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DaFcEKARV64

1 ESCAPE POD
2 THE FREE DESIGN
3 AVANT GARDE MOR
4 ANALOGUE ROCK
5 BLUE MILK
6 THE SEEMING AND THE MEANING

Thaaaanks.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Hi Flappy bird, have to kindly disagree that Cobra sounds the best of the post MAQ records. It's always sounded dense and somewhat muddy to me, whereas Dots & Loops sounded more bright and expressive. My favourite production is on Sound Dust where it's much more open and widescreen.

― Carlotta's Portrait (Ross), Thursday, March 23, 2017 6:27 PM (one month ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i put Sound Dust on last week for the first time in a while- it was sitting in my 'to sell' bin -and it blew me away. it sounds very cinematic, almost like the score to Chinatown in places. i heard Cobra and Phases for the first time a little over a year ago and it took ~9 months for it to percolate and become something i was obsessed with... i'll do a Sound Dust poll soon, need to listen to it more...

this is the fastest 1999 show i've heard

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=unl99JRrLos

This fucking poll is still going!?

I can't tell any album apart from any other post Ketchup. Is this one significantly distinct?

much more of a band vibe than Dots & Loops, the pop songs are poppier and the experiments are bolder. it's very in your face compared to Dots & Loops imo.

I've always thought of this as their smoothest yet most experimental album, which I know isn't saying much. Nothing else in the catalogue sounds quite like it.

it's a record of extreme contrasts, "italian shoes continuum" or "fuses" probably being the best examples. i love the way laetitia and mary's voices are manipulated throughout the record. i think it rocks a lot harder than anything post-ETK.

Fully aware that I am a disgusting savage, my relationship with the groop went: was a huge fan starting with SABPM up til Dots & Loops; listened to that album twice; broke up with the 'lab and never looked back.

I can't be the only one.

Hey, everyone has their points where they become disenchanted with a favorite band.

With Stereolab, Cobra... was the last big BIG hurrah, honestly, though I kept tuning in to the very end. (Margarine Eclipse means a lot to me, but some of that may be down to it being a tribute to Mary.)

(The last big hurrah for me, I should say.)

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Flappy bird - Sound Dust poll sounds so good! There's almost a Danny Elfman like quality in the opening track, it's cinematic no doubt. I still contend this album is one of the few albums that sounds awe inspiring in snow. It's a beautiful record and sorely underrated in Stereolab's discography.

It's their best. :)

'Vonal Declosion' is a top-10 Stereolab track for me.

otm

^^^

Margerine Eclipse has a handful of tracks I really love, and a bunch more that bore me

I have always thought this one and Sound-Dust are really underrated; not least of all for the very David Axelrod-reminiscent string arrangements throughout. The first section of 'Emergency Kisses' springs to mind immediately as a very much perfect musical moment in that regard.

i think the keyboards, or the keyboard+production combo, are pretty important on cobra phases. i've been thinking for a couple days about how to describe it and it's not right but it occurred to me that dylan's 'wild, thin mercury sound' gets in the right ballpark

In the liner notes, Tim makes special mention of the Farfisa electric harpsichord, which they began using a lot starting with this album.

Cobra is far from their worst. Basically post Margerine Eclipse they ran out of gas. Chemical Chords sounds like demos, and Not Music is an absolutely unceremonious last album.

Chemical Chords has a beguiling sweetness, girl group bounce, post-'60s on the shoreline sunsets, love heightening just as its potential recedes, triumphal sadness. Such gushing probably points to ultimately personal associations; and as we've discussed elsewhere, Sadier hated making it... but I love it dearly. In retrospect, with the brevity of its songs, it seems to be accelerating toward a conclusion. (This makes Not Music rather anticlimactic, I'd agree, though there are some dandy bits on it too). 2008 was no longer Stereolab's moment, and so their backward gazes seem more bittersweet.

Cobra was also my first "new" 'Lab album and holds a special place for me as the sole album I ever bought at a midnight release-day sale. I hope I still have the little promo poster I got with the groop lying down in a circle. The album seems a clear candidate for their most ambitious, somewhere between its ornamentation and its length; it's not quite as endlessly relistenable as Dots & Loops but it's pretty neat.

I am a little disappointed that the liner notes suggest that the title should be "Italian Shoes/Continuum" rather than "Italian Shoes Continuum".

― with hidden noise, Thursday, September 19, 2019 10:06 PM (five months ago) bookmarkflaglink

Italian Shoes Continuum is almost too much as a title - like something a Stereolab Title Generator would come up with

― Zelda Zonk, Thursday, September 19, 2019 11:29 PM (five months ago) bookmarkflaglink

actually this really helps me bc italian shoes is the first downer for me on the album and to know that i should hear this as one fused song rather than two (since i usually don't pay attention to the track breaks) gives me some motivation to try to see the value in italian shoes

with the slash it's more like, a strange occurrence that must be explained, how the shoes lead to the far more abstract and compelling phenomenon of a continuum

the spiracles also pretty draggy