The future of Stereolab

This seems to be a popular view of Stereolab and not one I subscribe to at all. Their scamper away from the indie disco dancefloor down ever-narrowing corridors of fussy detail and texture mirrors my own shift in tastes, and as a result I've loved most of their records (especially Sound-Dust and the last quarter of everyone's favourite one to knock, ...Milky Night).

That said, an end to Stereolab now, after Mary's tragic death, would seem appropriate, but there are unpleasantly humdrum things like brand identity and paying the mortgage to think about.

On the contrary, they aren't fun enough

Agreed, this is why I sold Dots & Loops which gradually revealed itself to be not much fun at all.

This could be cool. I remember an Autechre remix (of a song I can't recall) that was completely out of the ordinary for them, and very good. Maybe they should hook up with Matmos or something.

Yeah that could have gone further...although like I said I don't think the D&L melodies are quite up to snuff.

Madness! There are some flaccid moments sure, but "Super Falling Star", "Mellotron", "Orgiastic", etc... I ask you?

Am I still the only person who actually thinks Emperor Tomato Ketchup has been the least durable record so far?

Laetitia may be impatient with fans -- after a hiatus they produce Sound Dust which is such a good record -- so consistent (i love roughly every second song) -- having heard loops and milky i say it is their best album after tomato, perhaps the culmination of that direction in their sound

that tv program Cold Feet had a millenium special episode that reprised cul de sac perfectly, since the drift/ island/ end metaphor worked perfectly for the 'end of time' hoop-la surrounding 0/0/2000 and the possibilities of ths show drifting, out to sea or beached, which it sure ended up doing, even if they didn't think they were drifting then

i liked those promo photos of stereolab, with the power poles vertically alligned with the pictures perspective -- like harry lime as the giant (film) wheel comes to a stop over occupied vienna, a snapshot, on the road to the castle or back ? waiting for the flood ? (i don't stereolab are misanthropic, the fans tiny dots or dust, as if viewed from harry's perspective)

i like this album art, the indication of a peak, however insular, an acknowledgement by the band that they may well be too disconnected from their audience yet wishing to take the chicago computer collaborations to a decent conclusion .. i bet they knew sound dust was make or break time, if not for the group then at least for that sound, which surely they got right on this album tens times more so than on the two albums seemingly leading in that direction, validating for me those experiments along the way -- good on them for acknowledging the alienating potential, yet admitting that this was the peak of that stereolab at least

yes, i think they will go looking for other peaks, somewhere else (Lionel Stander did get to work in hollywood again, after all)

maybe the boo-boos will have to go and a new angle for the lyrics taken with both Marie's terrible departure and the band learning the hard lessons of producing something so good by their own standards even if these didn't meet the demands of their audience -- the artistic journey has been completed -- that concept in light of Marie's death is almost horribly prophetic in a spooky new way, beyond their worst dreams i imagine (is Polanski a real king midas of horror and despair ? dark forces ?) (i do not wish to trivialise _anything_ in saying this)

of course the album + art stands on it's own feet as beautiful music with a variety of sentiment -- most of the band can return to the main land and pursue some other groove -- after a presumably respectful period of meditation and change of trade-name

"hiatus"

http://www.stereolab.co.uk/news/

Perhaps a necessary thing, really.

diminishing returns for a while now

Question: is the future of Stereolab any different than the past of Stereolab?

:( At least Chemical Chords 2 will still come out (and I'm glad I saw them this last tour)

yeah, me too! their show last fall was wonderful. still, if anyone deserves a break, it's probably them. they've never gone more than a year or two without an album over the past 20 years, have they?

they've never gone more than a year or two without an album over the past 20 years, have they?

There were a couple multi-year gaps in between Sound-Dust, Margerine Eclipse, and Chemical Chords though I think the box set comes in there somewhere.

yeah, maybe i'm just thinking that there are always various collections coming out in between records -- never seemed like they disappeared for any significant amount of time.

They were great when I saw them live last year. Like, really great, as much fun as the first time I saw them. If this is one of those permananent breaks then they are going out with a bang, at least as far as live music is concerned. I don't think I have any of their albums from the last ten years, but live performance is at least as important to me.

My thoughts on seeing them in September -- if that's the last time I'll ever see them, then the last song I ever saw them do was a great version of "Jenny Ondioline."

Lots of great albums on that list

Looks great. Richard Harrison played bass with the 'lab though, not drums/percussion.

Hm, must have misread something! Will correct.

also it seems to mention 2002 in the first para? surely that's 2022?

i love copyediting

Great piece Ned, lots of stuff I hadn't known about at all. Curious to check out that Ghost Power, had no idea!

Wow, nice article! I have about half of those, but it has inspired me to dig deeper - thank you!!
One minor thing (this is extremely nit-picky) - I thought Laetitia's singing debut with McCarthy was earlier than *Banking...*
Just did a little Googling, and this page says the *Get a Knife Between Your Teeth* EP is from April 1990 (on which Laetitia is credited), but this page says *Banking...* came out in August 1990.

IIRC the recent reissue boxset credit her with being on the At War EP. from 1989 and even the earlier Should the Bible Be Banned EP but it feels like an error.

Either way, by Enraged, they were starting to experiment more and showing the seeds of Stereolab.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cb2ENkP7t4M

I will keep that in mind re McCarthy -- I've kept updating poor Caleb at Shfl all my glitches today so maybe down the road! But thanks all for the corrections, and of course the kind words.

Any idea what they're ending with on their current tour, assuming they're playing the same-ish set? "Contact"?

Super-Electric when I saw them in Sept. Encored with Simple Headphone Mind and French Disko iirc.

Ta, everything.

It's a bit of a blur but I think they ended their main set with Super Electric and then played three songs as an encore. Tim looked really into Super Electric and the last song of the encore. Refractions in the Plastic Pulse was particularly good.

Ta, everything.

It's a bit of a blur but I think they ended their main set with Super Electric and then played three songs as an encore. Tim looked really into Super Electric and the last song of the encore. Refractions in the Plastic Pulse was particularly good.

^ Not sure how that happened. Sorry.

Apparently the last song of the encore was Excursions into oh-ah-oh.

scored used copies of the reissues of ETK and D&L at the local shop. someone must've bought them new and returned them right away, cuz I noticed they were missing from the shelf lol

crazy how good Dots & Loops is. obviously this is no secret to anyone on ilxor.com but for some reason it never clicked with me back in the day.

dig those demos on Side F too. reminds me of the discussion we were having on the Police thread re: "songwriting". for example "Les Yper Sound" is cute in demo form but everything I love about that track is in the production. though I must say a stripped back Stereolab still sounds really good!

the demos have been a big revelation & my favorite thing about the reissues. a whole new way to enjoy stereolab

Yeah, for a band whose sound is as texturally deep as Stereolab, the demos are amazing in how they retain the pure essence of the song.

Would be cool to have a comp of just the demos. I prefer the early rougher sound of Transmissions and Bachelor Pad, and feel like something was lost as their albums got more polished. That may be why I tend to go to Electrelane or some other band when I’m craving a VU inspired drone rock fix.

Sorry, Transient not Transmissions. Don’t know where that came from.

Dots and Loops isn’t necessarily my favorite, but it fits into my middle-aged life better than the others. It’s the one I’m most likely to reach for.

I can't bring myself to sell my original CD copy of Simple Headphone Mind in the shiny metallic sleeve even though it's also on the latest Switched On compilation.

Sell it? That's the kind of thing I'd want to be buried with.

Weird - convinced that Stereolab had announced their retirement last night but can't see anything about it (Likely scenarios: 1 - dreamt this, 2 - read something while drunk).

Does anyone know what the song "The Free Design" is about? To my knowledge, the phrase only existed as the name of the 60s sunshine pop band, but in the song, Lætitia Sadier seems to parlay this phrase into a deeper concept. I'll post the lyrics here, in case anyone can figure it out:

Where it had been left hundreds of years ago?
Extract from the depth is but a setting sun
Paradise is scarce in this light that won't shine
What is our earthly task but a worthy design?

Some held it in sight for scattered it may have been
They're ready to fight in a priceless inkling
The request is here ready to resurrect
What else can we do but recover the project
Our earthly design can be so detached
What crushes our desire not to be trapped?
When the higher spheres tell us to and not to
Everyone agrees demanding more veto
Our earthly design can we be so detached
What crushes our desire not to be trapped?

Socialism bruh

The backing tracks get working titles, sometimes they change to reflect the lyrics, but usually not.

Well, she doesn't actually say "The Free Design" in the song. And as much as Lætitia Sadier was a doctrinaire socialist, this song doesn't seem to have socialist themes to me, at all.

Despite having heard that song hundreds of times and owning the Cobra CD with lyric sheet since it came out, I still thought "Paradise is scarce" was "Paradise is chaos", "Our earthly design" was "Or a free design", and "When the higher spheres" was "When the highest fears".

Guess I need to sit down with that lyric sheet and figure out what else I've been mishearing for the last two decades...

"The Free Design" is pretty cryptic but to me it seems to deal with a desire freedom from oppression of some sort (religious? governmental?)

What crushes our desire not to be trapped?

Capitalism, imo.

xp yeah, I'd always thought of "Free Design" as one of the rare Stereolab songs where the title shows up in the lyrics, but I guess not! Drawing a blank now -- are there ANY actual examples of this in their catalog?

"The Seeming And The Meaning"

^Yes. A few more of their earlier songs come to mind: "Super Falling Star," "Orgiastic," "Doubt," "Changer," "Laisser-Faire," "Des étoiles électroniques." Seems like they stopped doing it after '94 or so.

Also "Brigitte"

It's interesting how many of the lyrics seem to have been written with the title in mind, phonetically if not conceptually. Rainbo Conversation is a good example.

1993 Berkeley, CA (instore + club performance):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sytObArOro8

Only 950 views as of posting, I'm responsible for at least 25 of them.

Only too happy to add more

I watched part of this when it was pretty newly posted and then forgot to finish the rest. It's super cool, and bonus points for being recorded exactly one week after the first time I saw them.

Tim Gane makes a lot of interesting, in depth Spotify playlists

https://open.spotify.com/user/aciddeathpicnic

oooooh

that's gonna be a lot of digging for me. From the last few looks like he's been listening to nothing but italian prog, soundtrack and library music for ages.

thanks to these lists I now know that Aretha Franklin did a swell cover of "What A Fool Believes" back in 1980

Nice! Yeah, that Aretha cover is amazing, as is that free-improv album that his snipped-banana avatar pic is taken from: https://corbettvsdempsey.bandcamp.com/album/groupcomposing

Groopcomposing

... is in advertising.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6v9QzFGFhYg

The past, too:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKjrPs7bnco

Wouldn't have guessed that Sadier's, er, 'untutored' singing, fully foregrounded, would be a hit with advertisers. Bless.

Sadier is Kiri te Kanawa compared to Trio's "Da Da Da," which Volkswagen turned into a hit 40 years ago.

(40? Christ I'm old.)

Sadier spring 2024 North American tour and solo album

https://www.brooklynvegan.com/stereolabs-laetitia-sadier-announces-new-solo-album-tour-shares-une-autre-attente/

I remember hearing "One Small Step" and "OLV 26" in commercials, too (I think this was the early 2000s?).