LM Artist Poll No. 74 · STEREOLAB · Results Thread

IF I HAD VOTED I would have voted for "Percolations" which is my all-time favourite remix.

That is a great remix!

Here it is for anyone curious: https://youtu.be/UBXCGy5emEY

I'm a little surprised that MAQ and Refried Ectoplasm are so well-loved.

I didn't vote - too many choices plus have had crazy stressful week - but these are my top two albums so I feel reassured we are in safe hands! (insert whatever the more tastefully ironic modern equivalent of a winking emoticon is here)

Loving the graphics. Always a fan of colour gradients.

Thought Peng! 33 might be a lot higher and NAG too maybe, but I am excited for what is ahead. Hope to see some favourites high up but my knowledge is patchy post-2000 and also for the very early era so I look forward to new discoveries too. Thanks Moka and thanks to all voters!

"K-Stars" is one of those tracks on Peng (like "Super Falling Star" and "Stomach Worm") that seem to have more to do with the wider world of indie at the time than their own hermetic method

This feels profoundly OTM for a pretty big proportion of Peng!. Working backwards after SABPM and RTNBWA had been released, this definitely made for a "this isn't really the shtick I thought I'd signed up for" sort of post-purchase experience. Which is not to say I actually regretted purchasing it.

Adding to what others are saying about the graphics ... they look amazing!

No real surprises from the albums poll, except maybe for "Refried Ectoplasm" at #3. I thought "Dots and Loops" was an ILM favourite, but at least on this poll the damage was limited and it came in at #5. It's by far the worst of the top ten.

dots and loops and sound dust each had 5 first place votes so they woulda been 2nd/3rd if everyone only had one vote, they just had less consensus support

Thanks for putting this together, Moka!

I scrambled to put together a poll yesterday afternoon, raiding Discogs and YouTube as I did so, to remind myself of titles and MY GOD, it was just an overwhelming task. It's made me want to re-rip everything I have and stick it all on my phone (I think I did that around the time of Marge Ecl but that iTunes library got lost somewhere along the way), but even that is going miss out on so much vinyl. I'm not sure how much is collated on Spotify. Agreed on Percolations - I used to play that 12" a lot.

As with Kate Bush and David Bowie, I will check my gmail Sent folder in a few months' time and think "how did I miss that out?"

I like iatee's reasoning. So really Refried is #1. :)

Once upon a time, in some circles, putting Refried at #1 would have made me boring Mr Consensus. (Non-LP tracks from their golden era! An era in which they seemed determined to put their very best tracks anywhere other than on LPs!)

I'm really kicking myself that I didn't make the effort to vote, but I have a 24 year relationship with Stereolab (mind blown one night seeing "Super Electric" on TV and realising this was the band I had waited for) and felt too daunted to break it down to rankings. With live recordings my iTunes lists 38 albums. Heck, I even have Simple Headphone Mind. That spring in 1996 listening to ETK on repeat through a Discman with tiny speakers while I read Fred Hoyle's "A for Andromeda" and "The Black Cloud".Searching for six months for a copy of Amorphous Body Study Centre and mail ordering it from Exotica in the UK (I'm in Tasmania). Mary's death and the bittersweet redemption of Margerine Eclipse.
If I had to choose one, it would be "Avant Garde M.O.R." No, wait, "Super Electric". Or "Diagonals". Nope, can't even contemplate it.

Also, I voted for the Charles Long collab, Amorphous etc, in my albums poll but I didn't follow the noms thread to see whether that was actually considered a full album. It's included in almost its entirety on Aluminum Tunes (the vinyl of that *still* smells so good), skipping the truncated final track, so I wasn't quite sure. Anyway.

Digging the Amorphous Body Study Centre love. It missed out on explicit vote from me, but yep, it's the #1 reason why Aluminum Tunes was on my compilation-heavy ballot.

I'm still slightly terrified by "sur ... des ... rosiers ardents" TBH. Likewise OLV26.

Holy crap "Blips, Drips and Strips". I'd forgotten how much I like Cobra.

Percolator would have been my number one if i voted, what a bassline

Glad to see "K-Stars", but sad that it's so low. Was my #1, and I would have said the same in '92-'93. As simple and beautiful a sound/song as they ever made. Gorgeous, lambent drone medicine, like a five-watt filament in a darkened hash fugue. Lovely lyrics, too.

"K-Stars" is one of those tracks on Peng (like "Super Falling Star" and "Stomach Worm") that seem to have more to do with the wider world of indie at the time than their own hermetic method

This feels profoundly OTM for a pretty big proportion of Peng!. Working backwards after SABPM and RTNBWA had been released, this definitely made for a "this isn't really the shtick I thought I'd signed up for" sort of post-purchase experience.

Vote better.

Hello everyone! We'll start the day with an epic song that gives this poll its pun title!

http://i.imgur.com/TI8e6Fg.jpg
49. Refractions in the Plastic Pulse 5 votes, 113 points. 1 first place vote.
From: Dots & Loops (1997)
https://youtu.be/RQOrv1EmrJk

nice, didn't vote for this one, but probably would have if the first part could be taken as it's own song. I love the melancholy vibe of this and various other tracks from D&L. That ascending line they sing together is so great, like a sad spaceship climbing into space and then landing on an alien world.

re: Percolator - one of my favorites, seemed like such a bizarro track compared to just about everything they did before. When they performed this on the ETK tour, it escalated into a climactic moment where the whole band came together and the entire mix was fed through a distorted Moog. It sounded absolutely insane.

A few more notes

Pop Quiz - this was one of the first indications that they were starting to move in a different direction, although I didn't expect they'd come up with something as radically different as ETK.

Puncture in Radax Permutation - One of the best features for Mary Hansen

K-Stars - I agree with contenderizer that this sounds like pure Stereolab, such a nice moody piece. But yeah, at this point, they maybe hadn't quite differentiated themselves from other shoegaze or dreampop bands.

Peng! 33 - Lyrics cribbed from One Hundred Years of Solitude

Spark Plug - This is a great example of how ETK just piles layers upon layers of sounds to an overwhelming extent. They got more subtle with this later on, for better or worse.

Nihilist Assault Group - probably my favorite MAQ track. I love how they come back in the end with a more amped up version of the main tune. The distorted Farfisa drones are huge.

http://i.imgur.com/Wf8TeIW.jpg
48. Baby Lulu 4 votes, 116 points. 0 first place votes.
From: Sound-Dust (2001)
https://youtu.be/-eqHVGscSpg

Love the horn section in this one. Is 25 mins in between tracks ok?

in case any of you haven't seen this essential thread:

List The Direct References of Stereolab

Yes to 25 mins.

Nice to see a bit of pink at last. Sound-Dust did well in the albums poll so hopefully some more to come.

Baby Lulu was the last song I cut from my list. Happy to see get a decent position.

Really should have had Refractions on my list. They just have too many incredible songs.

Next up a Cobra song which might or might not be inspired by french film "baisers de secours"

http://i.imgur.com/DrTScew.jpg
47. The Emergency Kisses 5 votes, 118 points. 0 first place votes.
From: Cobra and Phases Group Play Voltage in the Milky Night (1999)
https://youtu.be/mmfrPS4K1IQ

It's good to see Cobra and Phases has its supporters. I still remember reading that NME review where it got 0/10. It was such a bizarre review.

Johnny Cigarettes, I believe. He might have posted here once.

Love Cobra and Phase and the last two above were way up there in my ballot.

0/10 is a joke for any Stereolab album or EP. Even at their worst they're still an interesting band. They don't deserve a score below 6.

Yeah it was Johnny Cigarettes. It still made their end of year albums list so it obviously wasn't an opinion shared will all the writers. It was their last album to make any of those kind of lists though. Shame as Sound-Dust and Margarine Eclipse were really strong.

Coming up a tie between two early songs, one is a b-side that I hadn't heard prior to this poll.

http://i.imgur.com/9pVHG4o.jpg
TIE 45. Perversion 6 votes, 120 points. 0 first place votes.
From: Peng! (1992)
https://youtu.be/MPJ_AIfntwg

http://i.imgur.com/nyev8Y5.jpg
TIE 45. Eloge D’Eros 6 votes, 120 points. 0 first place votes.
From: John Cage Bubblegum 7" (1993)
https://youtu.be/A5ZPxNzeFA4

Heaven knows that I like a long song, but "Refractions" really meanders for me. :\

Hey Nag! Did you cop your handle from "Nihilist Assault Group"?

Cabaret Voltaire, surely? ;)

0/10 is a joke for any Stereolab album or EP. Even at their worst they're still an interesting band. They don't deserve a score below 6.

otm, and why I found the prospect of ranking them so daunting. Going through these songs as you post them, and really enjoying them. Early stuff particularly, because my first record by them was actually Microbe Hunters, and didn't even try to go really far back until much later.

I remember a bunch of bad reviews for that stuff then too (I think pfork also had a really bad Cobra & Phases review?), and not getting it. Like, what was there to hate? Not like, find boring, that's fine, but saying a record is completely worthless implies some kind of offense taken -- and I can't imagine taking offense at anything these guys and girls did.

Recapping. . .

'Refractions': My #15. The phased out moogs are so dreamy.

'Baby Lulu': My #5. That bassline is so good. Sounds like Carol Kaye on a David Axelrod song.

'Emergency Kisses': My #8. The violin is just sublime.

i remember finding cobra & phases a bit dull, but only because i was stupid

Yes , for a casual listener you can accuse them of being boring or homogenic sounding maybe, but saying a whole album by them is worthless requires some very strong opinion against them, and you're right they don't seem the kind of band that you actively hate. They're easy to ignore and were mostly private about their life and creative process.

Cobra and Phases feels a bit unfocused and unambitious compared to the albums that came before it, but really it has a ton of great tracks

yeah, I do think it's kind of too long. However, if I'd voted, I would for sure have included its longest tune "Blue Milk", IMO one of the best distillations of krautrock ever

Perhaps Cobra is the album where the easy listening music started bleeding too much into every track, but they keep things interesting with complex rhythm arrangements I love Blips Drips and Fuses.

and Free Design, which might actually be my favorite Lab track

Well, being inoffensive could be the very crime they were getting slammed for, right? I'm sure Mr Cigarettes (real name Sharp) had a visceral distaste for the sort of vision of pop music Stereolab were peddling, and Cobra & Phases was the crest of the particular creative curve they were on at the time - a kind of refinement (and enlargement - Blue Milk!) of everything that anyone who went off them in '93 (or never liked them) would find annoying. The British inkies had a grand tradition of giving LPs (or gigs) to the writer who would give it the most florid trashing. S'lab have had a few savagings in here!

It made me angry at the time, and that was the idea.

xxxp

"Baby Lulu" and "Emergency Kisses" = two favorites that didn't make my top 20.

"Refractions" is a fascinating experiment, but I really only love the last part, from 12:45 on thru. Someone from Plaid must have been involved, right? Plinky-plonky bit sounds very Plaid.

Coming up another track from an ep I didn't know about but seems to have heavy support. Even a first place vote in there.

http://i.imgur.com/aDndUPv.jpg
44. Check and Double Check 5 votes, 124 points. 1 first place votes.
From: Laminations EP (1996)
https://youtu.be/h8qqdyGrHcQ

great track!

Cobra is overlong, tracks like "Italian Shoes Continuum" and "Op Hop Detonation" tread water, whole thing goes out of focus at/after "Velvet Water". Still a great album.

And yeah, the full immersion in "innofensive" easy listening was a difficult hurdle for me at the time.

Refractions is interesting. It's flowing so nicely just before the 4 minute mark. But after that it becomes a kind of strenuous exercise. Not really working, i find. Too serious, where is the lightness gone? In the second half it sounds exciting and surprising. Not like stereolab more like a slightly experimental electronic band like early autechre. But when the strings come in i'm bored again. A mixed bag.