Broadcast vs Stereolab

Voting for Stereolab with more ease than expected.

Yep, me too. Though i do enjoy Broadcast also.

Emperor Tomato Ketchup and French Disko might be my favourite album/single releases by either of them, but I found myself voting for Broadcast.

The run that Broadcast had from the release of Accidentals at the very beginning of 1996 to Tender Buttons a decade later is one of my favourite runs in music ever. The way you can own every single song they did in that period (and there's barely a weak song there) so neatly on three albums and two compilations makes it so easy to return to their work and hear the beautiful progression they made. With Stereolab it's a bit more of an effort considering just how much music they made and for me once you get to Cobra Phases, they just weren't as brilliantly consistent anymore (not to say they didn't make some great albums and plenty of awesome songs in the following decade).

I was always glad that I joined here just after the St Etienne vs Stereolab poll took place. This is almost as hard as that. All three of them are in my top 10 artists list, constantly switching places.

Not a lot to nitpick over in the Broadcast catalog, but they didn't exactly make tons of music either. Stereolab, otoh, made just endless amounts of great music. Yes, they fell off a bit on the last few albums, but even those were mostly very good. Take those out and you are still left with a massive stretch of nearly perfect and highly varied recordings.

I doubt if there's anyone who likes one of these bands and not the other. Love both, but got into Stereolab earlier and so they're a little bit further into my psyche.

Good point. I'd love to hear from anyone who likes one band and dislikes the other.

Stereolab was easily my favorite band throughout the 90s, yet somehow I didn't find out about Broadcast until some time post-2000. Definitely impacts how I rate them.

This is incredibly hard. Trying to make the comparison is just making me sad as I suspect Broadcast may have won convincingly if things hadn't been cut short. While Tender Buttons felt like something of a dead-end for me, the Focus Group collaborations and trippy live performances in the final months were pretty much exactly the sorts of sounds my brain most wanted to hear.

Broadcast, opinion definitely deeply influenced by having seen them live during the Witch Cults era.

It's really hard to quantify this stuff but it feels to me like the space Broadcast mapped out was wider and deeper... Stereolab I like too but I find I can only listen to a certain amount of it before getting super fatigued (and some of their catalogue I just can't do at all).

Not voting today because Stereolab is perhaps my favorite band of all time but today Broadcast is hitting all the right spots and they feel superior to me in ways the groop never achieved.

Of course, tomorrow Stereolab might be my answer again.

Probably about once a month I think about the posthumous Broadcast album that James has talked about being a possibility, this is a holy grail release for me.

Hm okay "once a month" doesn't sound like I'm that keen. I'm pretty keen.

I probably listen to more Stereolab, and they probably put out more good music, but Broadcast have always seemed like a special band for me in a way that Stereolab just don't.

Stereolab

Could never get into any Broadcast except Work and Non Work

there was a winter where i would only listen to broadcast, and there's something about the muted grandness of the noise made by people that for me is inextricable from an indeterminable feeling of approaching a precipice but not knowing where it is; at that time "come on let's go" felt like the truest articulation of moving w/in that space, and it still does. so i have to go w them

echoing emsworth on the general long-stretch fatigue of listening to stereolab, although i like em for sure

Stereolab for the mind and Broadcast for the heart. Can't choose, won't choose.

What you mean, "Versus"?

Get away with you...

Good point. I'd love to hear from anyone who likes one band and dislikes the other.

I used to be that person, so...

I loved Stereolab from the first moment I heard them, whereas for years after I first heard Broadcast I found them uncomfortably... sterile, I guess? Friends said "oh, you like Stereolab, you like Warp Records, you must like Broadcast" and I'd think "really? is that what people hear when they hear Stereolab?"

They just didn't make sense to me until "Haha Sound", which unlocked what I'd been missing from their older work too. (Actually I saw them live in 2000 or '01 and enjoyed it, so that probably helped, but I didn't work my way back to the records until Haha Sound came out.)

I love both bands now, though - but I'd still vote Stereolab. (Sorry!)

Btw I like 90s Stereolab including the early two-chord stuff way more than the post-Fluorescences stuff (which I now find OK, but I did find D&L also very cold & sterile at first) so that probably correlates with my not getting into Broadcast

Love both bands to bits, but I have to vote for Broadcast in this one. Their corpus of work isn't as big as Stereolab's, which kind of works in their favour. Stereolab's output is consistently brilliant, but Broadcast's peaks are even higher. It's magical.

which unlocked what I'd been missing from their older work

Yeah I definitely had this type of experience with Broadcast - of the depth of their work being revealed retrospectively. In my case seeing them live sent me back to the records with a vastly deepened appreciation of what they did.

I think also the linkup with Ghost Box perhaps gave me a slightly tweaked context for thinking about them, which helped a lot too.

Before this I had definitely written them off as sub-Stereolab, for whatever incorrect reasons.

Broadcast. Love stereolab but not sure anything they’ve done is as resonant as something like tears in the typing pool for me

This is impossible, really. Emotionally and tempermentally I think I'd have to go with Broadcast. But heard Stereolab earlier and was lead by them to a lot of music I came to love; whereas I already knew a good bit of the soundworld Broadcast were drawing from and so sort of appreciated their perfection of a context. I love them both for proving that sounds and ideas are never "finished" if there are people who still have something new to say with them, and the fickleness of popular recording tastes doesn't mean everything pulling from a tradition is "retro".

I'm one of what I take to be the small faction that prefers Stereolab's 'Dots and Loops' and after work to their more guitar-based Nue-inspired earlier work.

Stereolab were better live tbh

I couldn't choose between Dots and Loops and their krauty stuff tbh. They're perfect companions, all part of the same body of work imo.

xp

Broadcast classic for playing Vancouver on Halloween
Perfect occult vibes

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DSZrJ9hWkAAYtMc.jpg

lol

This seems like a reasonable thread to mention a couple mixes I did a while back in tribute to Stereolab and Broadcast a while back. The first is an exploration for some of the music in the 60s-70s that set the stage for Stereolab and Broadcast. The second is a mix of contemporaries and bands following in their footsteps.

https://musicophilia.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/musicophilia_00_various_-_la-diffusion_1957-1975_front.jpg?w=500&h=500

Various – ‘La Diffusion’
A Tribute to the spirit of Broadcast and Stereolab (1957-1975)

SIDE A

01 [00:00] Raymond SCOTT – “The Rhythm Modulator” (Manhattan Research Co., 1957)
02 [01:12] Silver APPLES – “Oscilations” (Silver Apples, 1969)
03 [03:55] Barry FORGIE – “Dawn Mists” (Stringtronics, 1972)
04 [07:17] Jean-Michel JARRE – “Black Bird” (Rarities, 1972)
05 [10:24] Mother Mallard’s Portable MASTERPIECE CO. – “Cloudscape for Peggy” (Self-Titled, 1970)
06 [13:40] Jacques THOLLOT – “Cecile” (Quand le son Devient Aigu, 1971)
07 [15:33] White NOISE – “Your Hidden Dreams” (An Electric Storm, 1969)
08 [20:36] Paolo RENOSTO – “Confronto” (Here and Now Vol. 2, 1974)

SIDE B

09 [22:50] Ian LANGLEY – “Frantique” (Reggae for Real, 1973)
10 [25:27] Blue PHANTOM – “Equilibrium” (Distortions, 1971)
11 [29:11] Braen’s MACHINE – “Obstinacy” (Underground, 1971)
12 [32:46] Karl Heinz SCHAFER – “La Victime” (Les Gants Blancs du Diable, 1973)
13 [36:23] Jacques SIROUL – “See” (Midway, 1973)
14 [39:53] David AXELROD – “Holy Are You (Instrumental)” (Release of an Oath, 1968)
15 [44:14] Piero UMILIANI – “La Rinuncia” (La Ragazza Fuoristrada, 1973)
16 [46:23] GOBLIN – “School at Night (Lullaby)” (Profondo Rosso, 1975)

SIDE C

17 [50:00] ORGANISATION – “Silver Forest” (Tone Float, 1970)
18 [52:27] Franz AUFFRAY – “Sweet Popcorn Part 2” (Original Popcorn, 1969)
19 [55:13] Guy BOYER – “Pop Sticks” (Ballad Pour un Vibra, 1971)
20 [58:12] Ennio MORRICONE – “The Victim” (Maccie Solari, 1974)
21 [61:41] Alan PARKER & John CAMERON – “Survival” (Afro Rock, 1973)
22 [64:47] Ananda SHANKAR – “Metamorphosis” (Ananda Shankar, 1970)
23 [68:02] United States of AMERICA – “Cloud Song” (The United States of America, 1968)
24 [71:32] Billy GREEN – “The Death of Doctor Death” (Stone, 1974)

SIDE D

25 [72:58] Alessandro ALESSANDRONI – “Galleria di Immagini” (Prisma Sonoro, 1974)
26 [76:52] Alain GORAGUER – “Valse des Statues” (La Planete Sauvage, 1973)
27 [79:14] Jacqueline THIBAULT – “Le Loup Quie Pleure” (Laurence Vanay, 1974)
28 [81:12] Manfred HUBLER and Siegfried SCHWAB – “Necronomania” (Der Teufel Kam Aus Akasava, 1971)
29 [83:33] Tom DISSEVELT and Kid BALTAN – “Moon Maid” (Electronic Music, 1962)
30 [86:34] Free DESIGN – “An Elegy” (You Could Be Born Again, 1968)
31 [89:25] Philippe BESOMBES – “Theme Grave” (Libra, 1975)
32 [91:21] Gianni ODDI – “Omerta” (Style, 1974)

https://musicophilia.wordpress.com/2015/08/23/musique-du-mondetribute-series-la-diffusion-1957-1975/

https://musicophilia.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/musicophilia_00_various_-_memories-of-tomorrow_1997-2015_cover.jpg?w=500&h=500

Various – ‘Memories of Tomorrow’
(1997-2015)

01 [00:00] Death and VANILLA – “Necessary Distortions” (To Where the Wild Things Are., 2015)
02 [05:55] BEAK – “Lulsgate” (Beak II Bonus, 2012)
03 [08:15] Jane WEAVER – “Argent” (The Silver Globe, 2014)
04 [16:10] Mount Vernon ARTS LAB – “The Black Drop” (The Seance at Hobs Lane, 2007)
05 [19:22] Last EX – “Trop Tard” (Last Ex, 2014)
06 [23:57] His Name IS ALIVE – “Everything Takes Forever” (Ft. Lake, 1998)
07 [28:02] The SOUNDCARRIERS – “Let It Ride” (Harmonium, 2009)
08 [33:45] PORTISHEAD – “The Rip” (Third, 2008)
09 [38:05] Belbury POLY – “Goat Foot” (The Belbury Tales, 2012)
10 [41:03] BROADCAST – “Unchanging Window” (The Noise Mde by People, 2000)
11 [44:48] CARIBOU – “After Hours” (Andorra, 2007)
12 [50:44] Yo La TENGO – “The Sea Horse (excerpt)” (The Sounds of the Sounds of Science, 2002)
13 [53:13] BECK – “Paper Tiger” (Sea Change, 2002)
14 [57:56] IVY – “Back In Our Town” (Apartment Life, 1997)
15 [62:27] TORTOISE – “I Set My Face to the Hillside” (TNT, 1998)
16 [68:19] STEREOLAB – “The Emergency Kisses” (Cobra & Phases Group Play Voltage in the Milky Night, 1999)
17 [74:12] The Advisory CIRCLE – “The Patchwork Explains” (As the Crow Flies, 2011)
18 [77:04] AIR – “Ce Matin La” (Moon Safari, 1998)
19 [80:35] Erykah BADU and Flaming LIPS – “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” (Heady Fwends, 2012)

https://musicophilia.wordpress.com/2015/08/23/tribute-memories-of-tomorrow-1997-2015/

broadcast is great, but this isn't close

For me, without pause, Stereolab.

Stereolab were better live tbh

This is very true despite the fact that Laetitia can be a bit pitchy, and Trish was one of the most perfectly pitched singers I've heard live.

Only got to see Broadcast once vs. about a dozen times for Stereolab. I was a bit dismayed at how much Broadcast copied Stereolab's drone jam shtick in their live show.

Never really understood or liked the tendency to compare these two bands, more different than similar to each other.

Broadcast - got into them first and more deeply than subsequent Stereolab admiration.

feel the same re comparison

gotta go with Stereolab, even though I greatly prefer Keenan's voice to Sadler's. Few bands can match the Mars-thru-Cobra run.

i think the comparison is mostly surface-level--eclectic experimental bands with an affectless female singer

They both draw on a certain retrofuturist non-hippie-60s vibe, but with very different specific focuses within that (admitedly niche) world. To me it's not really that they sound much alike, as that they sort of pair well to paint an even fuller picture. You could out it as extrovert/introvert, cool/emotional, futuristic/mystical, warm/chilly, etc.

This is sort of like Zep vs Sabbath or Fall vs Birthday Party. Breadth vs intensity.

Not really a fair fight here tho, I would be surprised if broadcast won

Tough poll tho. I mean broadcast wrote come on let’s go, one of the most beautiful songs ever. But then stereolab has pack yer romantic mind!

Ugh

Broadcast got compared to Stereolab because two of their first three releases were on Stereolab's record label, and at the time they sounded like early Stereolab (The Book Lovers, Phantom, The World Backwards). Not a lot more complicated than that, surely? The music press by nature are lumpers, not splitters.

Stereolab was definitely an important influence on Broadcast, but I think that the comparison comes often because the seem to hatch from the same set of influences yet made something really different with it: early electronic music, krautrock, suicide, united states, velvet underground, the free design, white noise, young marble giants.

Main difference might be that broadcast would often have a psychedelic, folkier side to them and Stereolab a more kitsch, pop side.

Poem of Dead Song vs K-Stars sums it up for me. Going with Broadcast because they happened to track more closely with my own interests as time passed... they went folk horror instead of avant garde

Broadcast had a much more interesting pivot to me near the end of their career. Stereolab’s last two records found them in such a hyper cut and paste pop mode, imo it makes sense that they folded as the train was running out of steam.

Broadcast instead as mentioned went folk horror. I’m convinced if trish didn’t die that the direction hinted at on focus group EP (a Jefferson airplane Avant Garde folk album) and mother is the Milky Way (pastoral folk with found sounds but no real electronics or layering, acoustic guitar dominant) would have led to an occult folk record.

Instead we got children of Alice minus trish, and that was more in line with Berberian or witch cults.

I’ll never forget trish signing my tender buttons poster and commenting on my old man Halloween costume (appled white spray paint to hair and wore onion glasses to appear older)

I was standing by the merch table and Trish and James were there. Trish says “you look green”. The neon venue lights were making my white spray paint beard and hair look green lol

Rip

She was way too young to die.

Another thing both bands sadly have in common

Yeah :-(

lol

xpost

ironically i did see the National in 2018, the only time i have seen them.

Too close to call, but I'll give Broadcast the nod - not least because they included Chelmsley Wood in a song ('Michael A. Grammar'), which is the estate in Birmingham where my nan lived, right next to where I grew up. Odd to find such a sense of place in a group that sounded nothing like other Birmingham bands.

It was almost as much of a surprise as discovering that Felt came from nearby Water Orton, of all places.

Broadcast have plenty of material though, with many eps, microtronics cds, tour exclusive material, etc - not as much as stereolab but I don’t want to be sad when they lose cuz I miss trish.

Stereolab forever and ever. love the albums, love the videos. the one show i was lucky enough to see blew my mind w how funky and dancey it was. i got to chat w Latitia for a half hour and she was super chill down to shoot the shit w whoever.

but i have to admit i haven't really heard much Broadcast. i listened to some live sessions yesterday and they were nice, they sound like a band inspired by Stereolab. wish there were more or those.

Yeah laetitia is super nice

but i have to admit i haven't really heard much Broadcast. i listened to some live sessions yesterday and they were nice, they sound like a band inspired by Stereolab. wish there were more or those.

― Hazy Maze Cave (Adam Bruneau), Saturday, June 30, 2018 1:36 PM

Adam Bruneau, you'd definitely be doing yourself a big injury to leave Broadcast at that. Their entire body of work is fantastic, and on par with Stereolab in quality if not quantity. I'm sure they were somewhat inspired by Stereolab, but their roots substantially predate Stereolab (see mix I posted upthread).

Soundslike otm

Stereolab easily. I initially ignored Broadcast because they seemed so derivative in the beginning, sort of like Hooverphonic, I assumed they were just Bandwagon jumpers. When their LPs got reissued, I had heard so much about them over the years that I bought them all and decided to work through them. Turns out Broadcast is great, just like everyone says. However, I can’t listen them them often. They seem to occupy a narrow band of emotion in their sound that feels slightly dark and depressing to me. This limited range means I can only listen to Broadcast in limited situations. Stereolab has many more moods and can sound as good in the bright summer sunshine and the dark and gloomy winters. Broadcast never sound good in the sun to me.

Hooverphonic?? wow. Off the money man

Just that they were 2nd wave like Hooverphonic,not saying they sounded like Hooverphonic. Just seemed like a new wave of artists copying established artists at the time.

^ Fair. First record did sound like a pram/stereolab deal..mixed with old man willow by elephant's memory

Their first eps and singles from the 90's were very Stereolab and even the first album at parts but by HaHa Sound they were mixing it with psych and horror folk and established a more unique sound for them. They stopped sounding as retro-futuristic as stereolab and started sounding haunted and extraterrestrial instead.

is it true they recorded the drums in haha sound in a church or something? cuz those fills on man is not a bird are massive.

Nothin' against Broadcast like, I've just never got into them for whatever reason, whereas I've loved the Lab since the very beginning.

xp

Pretty sure it's true. Ha Ha Sound rules.

Ha Ha Sound was the first one I heard and I really didn't dig it at all. Then I heard Work and Non Work a few years later and got it - and more recently, Tender Buttons, which is just stunning. Still not even close for me, even with Stereolab's quantity advantage.

EP 2 remains my favourite release for Unchanging Window/Chord Simple

Stereolab overall but I think Tender Buttons is better than any single Stereolab album.

i would say margarine eclipse is maybe on par with tender buttons

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

this seems like a super challopsy vote to me. having said that here's a broadcast tribute mix i put together after trish keenan's death. i never have put together a stereolab tribute mix.

sister irene o'connor - fire
sven libaek - inner space: music for eels
premiata forneria marconi - il banchetto
jean philippe goude - machine
chairmen of the board - white rose (freedom flower)
komeda - our hospitality
robert dennis - milk
joni mitchell - shadows and light (demo)
mike post - wouldn't it be nice
van dyke parks - ice capades commercial
the beach boys - my solution (later version)
riders of the mark - electronic insides and metal complexion that make up herr doktor krieg
simon and garfunkel - save the life of my child (alternate)
devo - because
random hold - what happened
camilo sesto - damned for all time
franco battiato - la convenzione
anika - yang yang
hp lovecraft w/ken nordine - nothing's boy
omar khorshid - guitar el chark
cmu - space cabaret
halfnelson - computer girl
ron geesin - untitled, bbc 1971
luiz eca & sagrada familia - please garcon

Wow

Stereolab for the head, Broadcast for the heart.

electrelane for the hips?

Close but broadcast should’ve won.

Trish forever

Rip angel

Went to see Broadcast many years ago at Maxwell’s on a whim and the energy, the vibe in the room was just incredible.

Closer than I thought!

Ten years ago, I would have reflexively voted for Stereolab but as time stomps along and both bands recede in the rearview mirror it's Broadcast who mean a lot to me now (and who I listen to more)

Stereolab has bigger footprint but Broadcast is more pure distilled essence

The Groop mean more to me than almost anything

Hard poll. Both bands are for record collector nerds, stereolab had tour only eps, remixes, collabs and many records. As did broadcast. Also pram but yeah. Love it all

unfair poll.

competition sucks as stereolab would agree

You go in that team, I go on this team
Divide everything, a flag or a number
Make 'em opposites, so there's a reason
Stigmatization, okay, now we can fight

nailed it

I don't think so, considering how close Broadcast came to winning.

But still these bands are both incredible. Putting them against each other seems a little eh. I wanna love both bands in my heart and not designate them a soccer team

Found mother is the Milky Way ep. super rare, pm me

Way to go Ross!

Yeah this hints at a syd Barrett rabbit hole. Imagine their last eps minus the electronics with found sounds and mostly acoustic !!

Like tears in the typing pool for a whole record

Anyone hitting me up please leave your email when messaging me

oh wow, still haven't been able to hear that!

listening to the Broadcast Black Session, Paris 5/4/2000 this morning. some good stuff

Hey everyone, ripping within a couple hours
Hold tight

apologies - broken computer, no internet at home anymore and my Aunt just died so i have been delayed. some of my other family members are also possibly very unwell. I will try to do this as soon as possible, sincerest apologies

sorry to hear about your aunt, ross. take care of yourself man.

thank you Karl, appreciate it