LM Artist Poll No. 74 · STEREOLAB · Results Thread

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great song. I think MAQ might be my favorite Lab album, just such a great balance of their early and later sounds

xpost
Faust's "Munic B" is basically horn + motorik, but I wouldn't say they sound much like this ("Rainy Day Sunshine" is the one Lab seems to prefer)

Dominique, Tuesday, 5 April 2016 21:14 (eight years ago) link

Xp. Annoying repetitional singing on this. This is horrible. How many times does she repeat the sentence? 50 times, 60 times or more? That is so awful and unimaginative. Makes me think of a spastic who can only utter one phrase. Sorry. I am totally flabbergasted how anybody can vote for this minimalistic nothingness in view of the rich catalog of stereolab songs

it's the distortion, stupid! (alex in mainhattan), Tuesday, 5 April 2016 21:16 (eight years ago) link

haha it's another one where all the vocals are background vocals! I don't know, think of it like a Philip Glass piece

Dominique, Tuesday, 5 April 2016 21:18 (eight years ago) link

Hahahaha Mars Audiac Quintet is hit or miss for me. It's their most homogenic album I think... For example I really, really like when the horns enter but I also think the song could be cut in half and I wouldn't mind.

✖✖✖ (Moka), Tuesday, 5 April 2016 21:19 (eight years ago) link

But glass is awful as well. Always the same shtick. The emperor without clothes.

it's the distortion, stupid! (alex in mainhattan), Tuesday, 5 April 2016 21:19 (eight years ago) link

Last track of the day! An old one too, turn up the speakers:

✖✖✖ (Moka), Tuesday, 5 April 2016 21:20 (eight years ago) link

http://i.imgur.com/bTatmtY.jpg
36. Harmonium 5 votes, 140 points. 2 first place votes.
From: Harmonium / Farfisa 7” (1992)
https://youtu.be/-MQOrXRCQBg

✖✖✖ (Moka), Tuesday, 5 April 2016 21:20 (eight years ago) link

xpost

I'm actually surprised you can think that and still like Stereolab. I hear bits of Music in 12 Parts all over their discography

Dominique, Tuesday, 5 April 2016 21:21 (eight years ago) link

Aaaaaaaaargh. About 30 places too low!

So, yeah, my #1. REALLY glad I switched to a ranked ballot now.

Maximum big surprise! (Nag! Nag! Nag!), Tuesday, 5 April 2016 21:24 (eight years ago) link

That's more like it. A nice tune to end the day. And we turn and we turn and we turn. Till the end of time.

it's the distortion, stupid! (alex in mainhattan), Tuesday, 5 April 2016 21:25 (eight years ago) link

I saw phil glass live in the 80s. Don't remember what it was. Anyway it all sounds the same. And i think it was the first time i had this impression of immaculate, sterile, fascistic beauty in music. I haven't listened to him since. And it did not harm.

it's the distortion, stupid! (alex in mainhattan), Tuesday, 5 April 2016 21:29 (eight years ago) link

Never really got Anamorphose

Check Yr Scrobbles (Moodles), Tuesday, 5 April 2016 21:31 (eight years ago) link

Well, I guess it isn't surprising you like early stuff more. It seems like the early Stereolab favored minimalism a la Velvet Underground, Neu, LaMonte Young, where later Lab sub'd for Glass melodies, Reich percussion

Dominique, Tuesday, 5 April 2016 21:33 (eight years ago) link

Are there any bands that made the kraut-motorik thing with a horn ensemble prior to this one?

https://youtu.be/CmgFBSmoLmc

Check Yr Scrobbles (Moodles), Tuesday, 5 April 2016 21:36 (eight years ago) link

oh great, another poll where we have to listen to alex in mainhattan complain after every other result, and talk endlessly about how these tracks that lots of people love are so horrible and worthless

Anamorphose was my #16, fantastic cyclic Glass-worship

the 'major tom guy' (sleeve), Tuesday, 5 April 2016 21:37 (eight years ago) link

Are there any bands that made the kraut-motorik thing with a horn ensemble prior to this one?

https://youtu.be/CmgFBSmoLmc

― Check Yr Scrobbles (Moodles)

Oh wow! That's is actually spot on.

✖✖✖ (Moka), Tuesday, 5 April 2016 21:38 (eight years ago) link

LOLOLOLOL. Nifty.

Maximum big surprise! (Nag! Nag! Nag!), Tuesday, 5 April 2016 21:43 (eight years ago) link

Cut "Anamorphose" in half? It's the opposite -- it should be 15 minutes long.

I don't understand the criticism about it being repetitive. Of course it's repetitive, that's the point. And it builds beautifully to the horn parts at the end.

You can imagine most of the tracks on MAQ getting extended by another 3-4 minutes, there's no necessity in cutting off "Transona Five" or "Three Dee Melodie", so I'm not sure why they "chose" "Anamorphose" to be the long one.

"Metronomic Underground" is more repetitive than anything on MAQ, but I don't think it'll be criticized for that.

NoTimeBeforeTime, Tuesday, 5 April 2016 21:47 (eight years ago) link

Xp. I'll stop complaining. It doesn't lead anywhere, i know. Great poll, Moka. Thanks for all the effort put in this.
And the thing about neu! and vu as influences in the beginning and glass and reich later on might be true. I actually like reich, drumming is a personal fave..

it's the distortion, stupid! (alex in mainhattan), Tuesday, 5 April 2016 21:49 (eight years ago) link

wau that supremes track!

mookieproof, Tuesday, 5 April 2016 21:50 (eight years ago) link

President Carter loves repetition. Chairman Mao, he dug repetition...

Maximum big surprise! (Nag! Nag! Nag!), Tuesday, 5 April 2016 21:55 (eight years ago) link

Cut "Anamorphose" in half? It's the opposite -- it should be 15 minutes long.

I don't understand the criticism about it being repetitive. Of course it's repetitive, that's the point. And it builds beautifully to the horn parts at the end.

You can imagine most of the tracks on MAQ getting extended by another 3-4 minutes, there's no necessity in cutting off "Transona Five" or "Three Dee Melodie", so I'm not sure why they "chose" "Anamorphose" to be the long one.

"Metronomic Underground" is more repetitive than anything on MAQ, but I don't think it'll be criticized for that.

― NoTimeBeforeTime

you could edit it but I wouldn't.

✖✖✖ (Moka), Tuesday, 5 April 2016 22:03 (eight years ago) link

I was the #1 vote for Anamorphose... the groop at their peak imho which dovetailed with my peak fandom of the band as well.

Somewhat shocked that it barely made the top 40, but then again this is ILM.

l n'y a rien de,
De plus vrai que,
De plus vrai que le,
Plus vrai que le souffle,
Il n'y a rien de,
Plus vrai que le souffle.

Jersey Al (Albert R. Broccoli), Tuesday, 5 April 2016 22:12 (eight years ago) link

my #8

mookieproof, Tuesday, 5 April 2016 22:14 (eight years ago) link

Poll has made me want to buy Stereolab vinyl but the reissues are very expensive! I have Peng! and D&L, was thinking about buying Transient and Sound Dust next... I don't know if the switched on comps have ever been printed in vinyl... would buy Refried in a heartbeat.

✖✖✖ (Moka), Tuesday, 5 April 2016 22:28 (eight years ago) link

Only 4 other people had the good sense to vote for "Harmonium," and only myself and Nag! put it at #1. Shame on y'all.

lingereffect (Kent Burt), Tuesday, 5 April 2016 22:32 (eight years ago) link

Refried 2LP is available from Drag City. Shouldn't be too expensive.

lingereffect (Kent Burt), Tuesday, 5 April 2016 22:34 (eight years ago) link

I'll look into it, if there is one band in my mind that deserves to do the whole vinyl collector fetishism, it's this one.

✖✖✖ (Moka), Tuesday, 5 April 2016 22:45 (eight years ago) link

It's funny. Kent and I are acquainted outside of ILX, but we rarely to seem to agree on anything in these polls. This time an off-thread outrageathon over "Harmonium" has commenced. :)

Maximum big surprise! (Nag! Nag! Nag!), Tuesday, 5 April 2016 22:47 (eight years ago) link

Only 4 other people had the good sense to vote for "Harmonium," and only myself and Nag! put it at #1. Shame on y'all.

It made my long list!

Jenny Ondioleeene (Leee), Tuesday, 5 April 2016 22:48 (eight years ago) link

I was walking to work today and listening to Transient, which I don't do too often, and listening to Golden Ball I started to think: wow, this evil mess is actually really good! It was never what I looked to them for, but they could totally execute it.

When I checked back into the poll the results seemed practically random: Anamorphose, Laisser-faire, Check and Double Check? All those songs that blended together around my favorites? Which is glorious - there are like a million ways to love the Lab! I won't quite understand if Klang Tone or something makes the top ten but I'm really enjoying hearing these things anew through other ears.

bentelec, Wednesday, 6 April 2016 00:02 (eight years ago) link

whole show from '94 here, and pretty great sound too. These guys were as tight live as on the records, and luckily I got to see them before Mary died.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sw5bZWFM9BM

Dominique, Wednesday, 6 April 2016 01:29 (eight years ago) link

nice!

the 'major tom guy' (sleeve), Wednesday, 6 April 2016 01:43 (eight years ago) link

I saw them for the first time 6 days before that Danbury show at The Middle East in Cambridge, MA

Check Yr Scrobbles (Moodles), Wednesday, 6 April 2016 02:26 (eight years ago) link

Yes, I've seen that Danbury '94 show, it's the best live document of early-ish Stereolab I've seen on youtube.

I also saw them on that tour, eight days before the Danbury show, opening for the Fall in Toronto.

NoTimeBeforeTime, Wednesday, 6 April 2016 07:31 (eight years ago) link

Posted this thread on the stereolab.co.uk forum and apparently a couple of readers are wondering why Margerine Eclipse isn't in the top 10 albums. I voted for two tracks but had no idea it had a fanbase. Only one of you included it in his albums list in 3rd or 4th place iirc.

✖✖✖ (Moka), Wednesday, 6 April 2016 07:46 (eight years ago) link

Unrelated: not a single one of you voted for Whisper Pitch and you're missing out on one of their best latter songs.

✖✖✖ (Moka), Wednesday, 6 April 2016 07:48 (eight years ago) link

Which albums do the "Margerine Eclipse" boosters not rate highly? The early stuff I guess?

NoTimeBeforeTime, Wednesday, 6 April 2016 09:45 (eight years ago) link

Margerine Eclipse might be the least familiar of their LPs for me. Though it's mostly fun, and I had "La Demeure" on my shortlist until a late cull. Somewhere in the ILX archives is a regrettable thread I started shortly before its release in which I asked whether we even needed any more Stereolab recordings at that point. Doomed before I even heard a note!

Maximum big surprise! (Nag! Nag! Nag!), Wednesday, 6 April 2016 10:05 (eight years ago) link

I think Nov '94 was the best Stereolab show I saw - Sheffield Leadmill (Laika and David McAlmont supporting! Not together, sadly). I guess I saw them... six times, maybe, between '92 and '04.

Michael Jones, Wednesday, 6 April 2016 10:10 (eight years ago) link

No, I've checked the web and I went to nine shows...

Oct '92 Boardwalk, Manchester
Oct '93 Garage, London
Nov '94 Leadmill, Sheffield (Laika, McAlmont)
Jun '95 Lomax, Liverpool (Yo La Tengo)
Sep '95 Riverside, Newcastle (Tortoise, Mouse on Mars)
Mar '96 Forum, London (Tortoise, Broadcast)
Nov '99 Heaven, London
Apr '00 ATP, Camber Sands
Apr '04 9:30 Club, Washington DC

Michael Jones, Wednesday, 6 April 2016 10:13 (eight years ago) link

!!! The web suggests that my equivalent, er, list is:

1998-02-03, Prince of Wales, Melbourne

Maximum big surprise! (Nag! Nag! Nag!), Wednesday, 6 April 2016 10:38 (eight years ago) link

I have an old VHS of a live gig filmed from the side of the stage, you can easily imagine you are on stage with them, playing bass maybe.

At one point, band member asks Tim what's next, tim replies "Harmonium Percolater" or some such, band member goes "ah, which one's that?" and Tim goes, "you know, langalanga dungung nerrrr"

(Quotes from memory, probably not exact)

Mark G, Wednesday, 6 April 2016 10:43 (eight years ago) link

Posted this thread on the stereolab.co.uk forum and apparently a couple of readers are wondering why Margerine Eclipse isn't in the top 10 albums. I voted for two tracks but had no idea it had a fanbase. Only one of you included it in his albums list in 3rd or 4th place iirc.

I listened to Sound-Dust and Margerine Eclipse back-to-back a while ago and remember being struck by how joyous the former was and how deflated the latter, despite some lovely material. I had liked Margerine a lot upon release, when I still had little sense of who was in the band and what Mary Hansen's passing meant for them (despite Sadier singing "goodbye, Mary") — I'd been a fan since '98 but still didn't really know who the group were (had never seen them). The relative anonymity of the band members ("Anonymous Collective," no group photos in the album artwork) seemed key to their utopianism; yet in another sense Stereolab weirdly didn't seem like "people." The separation between the knowingly allusive track titles (which, like a lot of us, I often don't remember) and emotionally/politically direct lyrics (which I often do) performs some of this displacement, too — the "meaning" seemed to be in the gap between the two things, but in a way the meaning was the gap itself. I wonder if insisting on this gap became difficult to sustain over time. More recently, reading interviews where Laetitia Sadier has talked about the band's "industrial" production methods (recording a huge number of tracks very quickly, basically), which she seemed to find increasingly dehumanizing, was rather poignant. I actually love Chemical Chords (my #2 album), whose making she described as particularly difficult, but where I hear this sense of looking out in longing over the horizon on the title track, and seeing the end of something on the closing track. Not sure if they knew it was the end (at least for a while) when they were making it, but it feels that way.

eatandoph (Neue Jesse Schule), Wednesday, 6 April 2016 11:33 (eight years ago) link

Only one of you included it in his albums list in 3rd or 4th place iirc.

I had Margerine Eclipse on fifth place and my first four places were all early Stereolab, with Switched On on the #1 spot. I think ME is their return to form as stated upthread. I think it is very lovely and in a way it is an album where they come back to their melodic roots after all the experiments and differents styles they tried in between which were ok and surely necessary but for me they represented more a transitory phase than anything else.

it's the distortion, stupid! (alex in mainhattan), Wednesday, 6 April 2016 11:45 (eight years ago) link

from the opposite pov - I like margerine eclipse fine but it feels very unambitious after their previous string of albums. post-sound dust it really does feel like they're just doing beep-bloop stereolab.

iatee, Wednesday, 6 April 2016 11:50 (eight years ago) link

I was at the Forum and Heaven shows that Michael attended too! Probably saw them about a dozen times altogether. Most exotic location was, erm, probably Eindhoven.

Jeff W, Wednesday, 6 April 2016 12:28 (eight years ago) link

Actually, it was a different '96 show. Got confused by the reference to Broadcast. Think I saw them in Kilburn with Broadcast supporting (and Squarepusher?), around the time Fluorescences EP was released.

Jeff W, Wednesday, 6 April 2016 12:31 (eight years ago) link

from the opposite pov - I like margerine eclipse fine but it feels very unambitious after their previous string of albums. post-sound dust it really does feel like they're just doing beep-bloop stereolab

OTM. "Chemical Chords" is much of the same, but catchier. They were mostly running in place in the last few years of their career.

NoTimeBeforeTime, Wednesday, 6 April 2016 14:26 (eight years ago) link

I think there are lots of great individual songs in there, but yeah, overall there was just less joy in what they were doing after Mary passed

Check Yr Scrobbles (Moodles), Wednesday, 6 April 2016 14:28 (eight years ago) link


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