The Stereolab Albums Poll

Voted for Emperor Tomato Ketchup, it's my third favourite album of the 90's.

My top five would be:

1.Emperor Tomato Ketchup
2.Dots & Loops
3.Sound Dust
4.Margerine Eclipse
5.Transient Random Noise Bursts

I haven't heard a couple of the mini albums listed here. Fab Four Suture would be my least favourite.

Still haven't been able to decide between Peng! and Emperor Tomato Ketchup. Not sure the tie will ever be broken.

Transient for this guy. I tend to like the earlier stuff better than the post-Dots stuff, which is generally pleasant but not terribly engaging to me. I think the later albums would be more effective if they were reigned in to more concise 45-minute runtimes (and yes, I am aware that my favorite is over an hour long, but it's their most motorik-heavy so it works). The last one I messed with was Sound Dust.

Dots and Loops 4-ever for me.

(I've always been fond of Josh Kortbein's defense of the album.)

To which I extended the following argument (here -- though I should note that I'm not particularly proud of the essay overall):

Kortbein is right to focus on rhythm as the component that makes Dots and Loops stand out, but he doesn’t extend this idea far enough. I don’t think he is suggesting that the beats on other Stereolab albums are any less prominent; as far as I can see, the difference is that “Jenny Ondioline” and “Metronomic Underground” use rhythm in a linear fashion, whereas Dots and Loops treats it circularly. To clarify, lots of the band’s work, and especially the early stuff, is devoted to a groove, but it’s a straight, immediate, almost mechanical 4/4; you bob your head as it pushes forward, like a car zooming down an empty highway or a train rapidly clicking past each rail. Whereas on Dots and Loops more than half the songs are in some other time signature (variations on 5/4 more common even than variations on 3/4), and even the songs that aren’t tend to hold back from emphasizing any particular beat too strongly, which creates a peculiar decentering effect. The rhythm is urgent and cyclical, but you’re not always sure where the cycle starts; rather than tilting ahead, you let yourself float, as though in a whirlpool.

Margarine Eclipse has grown to become a real solid bedtime album for me. At this stage I've probably listened to it more than any of the other albums, though (given I'm usually falling asleep) not as closely as my earlier favourites like ETK and Transient.

xxpost: good reads, never really noticed it but the focus on beats is otm. The rhythm design in Dots and Loops is very specific to the overall sound and has some particularities which no Stereolab record up to that point had done before. It does mark a swift from rock experimentalism into electronica.

jaymc otm, D&L really does some great things with unconventional time signatures. I wish they'd gone further in that direction before buggering off into bossa nova jazz.

I think the later albums would be more effective if they were reigned in to more concise 45-minute runtimes (and yes, I am aware that my favorite is over an hour long, but it's their most motorik-heavy so it works). The last one I messed with was Sound Dust.

― International Waters, Tuesday, 15 March 2011 02:27 (4 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

All the albums after Sound-Dust are less than an hour long.

I'd stick with my ranking of a few years ago except to add the most recent couple to the bottom and flip Peng! and Emperor Tomato Ketchup to put ETK back on top where it belongs.

I love the weird production on Peng!, and the songs are just better than Switched On.

I think the problem with their recent music is these endless, aimless modulations that leave all their songs feeling diffuse. Like I'm looking forward to Tim "discovering" soul or dub reggae or whatever just to start grounding the songs in popular music again.

i like the three comps more than any of their albums proper. then it's transient -> etk -> peng -> not music, then the rest, then CPGPVITMN way way down the bottom

i think cobra & phases is by far my least favourite record by any band i have really loved

mars probably belongs before peng there

Aluminium Tunes is pretty good but the second disc is a bit meandering. Oscillons makes a great single album once you cut out all the alternate versions of singles and such. Serene Velocity is pointless if you have all the normal albums.

Not Music is the first slab album in 15 years that I've not been able to extract any joy from at all. It does almost nothing for me and I don't know why.

Gotta say, after "Transient", "Music For The Amorphous Body Study Center" blew my head off. It felt like they were synthesizing a number of lines of musical thought on that one into a different take on their krautrock mutation. I never felt they bettered it after it came out.

I still haven't heard Not Music--the only 'lab disc I've not listened to. From what I understand it's all stuff from the Chemical Chords sessions. I went back over the weekend and revisited Chemical Chords and remembered just why I never put it on--I can't stand the way that most of the songs just end, abruptly after 3 minutes or so. I thought I had a preview copy when I heard the mp3s--bought the record and it made just as little sense.

i think not music craps all over chemical chords. i probably like it more than anything they've done since ETK tbqh

I take it back I haven't heard Fab Four Suture either.

Fab Four Suture (FFS, lolariously) starts and ends with the most fantastic whackjob of a march ever. It's not terribly cohesive as an album but still great. Plastic Mile is one of the top five songs they've ever done.

Chem Chords is brilliant but you can't very well become absorbed in the short songs the way you can with say Margerine Melodie or Refractions in the Plastic Pulse.

It's not terribly cohesive as an album

well, it is technically a singles collection

Yeah. I still regard it as an album as that was the planned result of all the singles, even though it doesn't work like one (although it definitely feels more like an album that the six-track Kybernetica Babicka release a few months before).

orright i'm just getting geeky now

I hadn't even heard of that one, guess I've been out of the labloop for a while

Was just trying to figure out what the Macedonian flag reminded me of, then realized it looks like a detail from the Peng cover:

http://www.mapsofworld.com/images/world-countries-flags/macedonia-flag.gif

top 5 today :

01. transient random noise
02. cobra and phases group (the first one i heard. and the one i listened to the most, despite the fact that is too long in runtime)
03. dots and loops
04. mars audiac quintet
05. margerine eclipse

never cared that much about 'etk' tbh/dunno why, really

I still love playing Excursions Into "Oh, A-Oh" from Fab Four, which recreates the experience of turning off their later crap (and actually the start of Excursions is pretty decent) and blasting the wonderful Switched On instead. I wonder if other people have the exact opposite reaction.

I also kind of wonder if they did this trick elsewhere, since I haven't listened to all of their late albums w/great attention. "Excursions" is really pretty cool in the way it suddenly turns into old style Stereolab, pretty much on a dime (at 3:20 in), while still referencing the newer sound...

This is a really tough one to decide. Here's how I group these.

Top Tier:
1993 Transient Random-Noise Bursts With Announcements
1996 Emperor Tomato Ketchup
2001 Sound-Dust

Nearly as good:
1992 Peng!
1994 Mars Audiac Quintet
1997 Dots and Loops
1995 Refried Ectoplasm (Switched On, Vol. 2)
1998 Aluminum Tunes
1999 Cobra and Phases Group Play Voltage in the Milky Night

All the music they've done since Sound-Dust I've liked a bit, but don't love. I think the loss of Mary Hansen really hurt them as a band and they haven't ever truly recovered.

Tosh, the last two albums are fantastic.

i always vacillate between Transient, Emperor Tomato Ketchup and Mars Audiac Quintent. Today it's Mars.

Next Switched On will be called 'Constant Vacillations'

hi boob oscillator

hi

oscillator say hi to boob

oscilator iirc

'Sound Dust' is massively underrated...it got me back into Stereolab after unloving them 'cause of 'Dots and Loops'.

fake Stereolab song titles

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Transient Ambient all the way. I was ambivalent about all their albums after that one.

Cobra was the first one where I was like "Hmm, they seem to be slipping a bit here" and, though there are moments of it I really like, I never quite warmed to it. And I've never really formed an attachment to anything since. Dots & Loops could have better songs, but that is a sonic masterpiece IMO, really next-level production. Probably Switched On Vol. 2 is my favorite now.

In retrospect I should have voted dots and loops.

oh wait... i think I just did... mmm apparently I got to vote twice ...

This poll... :-/

Had to go for Dots and Loops in the end, after battling off Emperor. But really, this is one of the most impossible polls ever on ILM.

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

rockists

run tell dat

I've always kinda found the love for Transient Random-Noise Bursts With Announcements - I remember the band considering it something of a failure, had issues with the production, felt some of its experiments were not successful, etc. MAQ and ETK seem much more focused imho.

found the love odd, that should say

decided today that i really, really hate cobra and phases group

ETK is fantastic and deserves its place here. MAQ is half pop and half drone, so for me it doesn't flow as an album. TRNB has good moments but is a pretty niche experience.

xp Cobra & Phases is horribly engineered, all thin and reedy. It works for the atmosphere but there's a whole bottom end missing imo.