Stereolab: Classic or Dud

The first 7 posts on this thread are so OTM.

I've wondered why I keep finding myself disagreeing with your music opinions, but now I understand: you are keeping the torch burning for the challops of 2001 ILM.

That's incorrect, and the first 7 posts on this thread are still OTM.

v incorrect

a beguiling band with a dense, varied discography unique among their peers

otm ^

turrican aggressively wrong, again

That means nothing coming from someone who thinks Animal Collective is some sort of gold standard of anything.

Agreeing with those 2001 posts is hardly your most controversial opinion, but I definitely don't agree since Sound-Dust is probably my favorite Stereolab album and D&L is also fantastic.

when you start breaking down the things they do into individual components - lyrics ranging from marxist sloganeering to abstract cutups, ye-ye vocals, dizzyingly complex chordal and structural exercises, aggressive editing, motorik beats, insanely loud drone rock, brass and orchestral arrangements, analogue synthesizer experiments, multi-layered female harmonies, etc etc - it's insane. what other bands do these things? Covering and packaging such a disparate range of sounds and influences and references in such a consistently coherent way is a singular achievement.

even if I did get off the boat (mostly) after Dots and Loops.

and I think it's important to remember them in context - they were not part of a scene or group of bands that were also pursuing these things, they were in their own little universe.

Margerine Eclipse is surprisingly good- and it's dual mono, hard panned which produces a very interesting effect i haven't encountered much elsewhere

There's definitely a bunch of bands, mostly grouped in London and Chicago, that I think were pretty closely aligned with what they were doing:

Th' Faith Healers, Broadcast, The High Llamas, Imitation Electric Piano, Tortoise, Jim O'Rourke, Pram

xp

I absolutely love, love, LOVE everything from Transient... up until Emperor Tomato Ketchup, with Mars Audiac Quintet being my absolute favourite of theirs and quite possibly one of my favourite LP's of the '90s. I even like parts of Dots and Loops, but I find albums like Cobra... and Sound-Dust a bit on the boring side.

I definitely agree that they kinda seemed out there on their own during the '90s... I remember seeing them live circa Emperor Tomato Ketchup and I can't think of anyone else who was quite like them at that time. I begun to hear their influence in various things over the next decade, though.

Stereolab were well into their career before Broadcast made their debut. The High Llamas don't really count as Sean O'Hagan was also a member of Stereolab.

of Moodles list Broadcast is the only that came close imo, but I feel like they went down their own weird rabbit-hole as the line-up contracted

personally I absolutely hate the High Llamas, Tortoise, O'Rourke

xp

Cobra and Phases is my favorite by far, I prefer the Groop's records from ETK on over the earlier heavy distorted drone stuff but it's all pretty amazing, from the Low-Fi EP up thru Not Music.

and yeah while those artists were unique and strange in their own way (and collaborated with the Group), Stereolab were completely in their own universe.

I like O'Hagans string arrangements for other bands, but I'm not into his own music with The High Llamas. I'm not a fan of Tortoise or O'Rourke at all.

(xpost)

given that MAQ is one of your favorite albums of the 90s, I'm a little baffled that you rate a bunch of posts that conclude this band is "dud" (or "mostly dud") Turrican.

The thing that most/all of those posts have in common is the opinion that up to 1997 they were great, and afterwards not-so-great, which happens to be an opinion I share.

I agree with that thesis but as Ned pointed out in 2001,they've got a massive amount of one-offs, compilations tracks and collaborations that are fascinating and very different than their contemporary albums, all the way up to the end if their career.

their mini-albums / post-LP singles especially (thinking of First of the Microbe Hunters and Fluorescences, which should've been on ETK or D&L - their one hit wonder in another universe).

Agreed. Their EPs are like little universes unto themselves. I've been meaning to make a playlist of them in order, unlike the way the "Oscillons" box mixed them all up.

The only album they released which is less than great is the final album Not Music. Even it is good but it somehow sounds unfinished and tossed together and it's the only one with kinda an ugly cover.

Not Music has the ugly cover?? I love it, looks like vintage Stereolab... Chemical Chords is the one that's garish and remarkably bad. Looks like a Matt & Kim album.

not music is tossed together cuz it's a continuation of material left off of the vastly superior "chemical chords". not music is still a-ok tho

I can't look at the album cover without reading it as "Snot Music". Has some good tracks though...

the opener "Everybody's Weird Except Me" is in my Stereolab top 10

Among their shorter form works, let us not overlook Music From the Amorphous Body Study Centre - one of the few times I have tracked down a rare release and it has been absolutely worth the effort. Not that it's hard to get anymore of course.

disagree with the revive based on sound dust alone, can't think of a more perfect album for fall/winter, different vibe than their catalog in a fine way

moodles also OTM re Pram

tortoise is great but i don't see the connection to stereolab

Covering and packaging such a disparate range of sounds and influences and references in such a consistently coherent way is a singular achievement

shakey otm here

problem with moodles' list is that it only covers one aspect of stereolab's sound

high llamas are fine but always struck me as one-dimensional compared to stereolab

I'd be even less charitable but that seems fair

I dearly love Sound-Dust, way more than any other post-ETK record of theirs, they let some cracks show and the emotion bleeds through

Just to be clear, I'm not saying those bands necessarily sound like Stereolab, but they are part of overlapping scenes, have collaborated, and share general aesthetic outlooks.

On John Peels festive 50, Tortoise's DJed got interrupted with a burst of Stereolab. At that point, there didn't seem much to connect the two.

First 7 messages in this thread snotty as hell. So glad it's 2017.

(Love Dots and Cobra to bits)

I don't really pretend to understand what the first 7 messages are saying, but I agree with Turrican inasmuch as I adore everything up to and including ETK but got off the bus with Dots, which sounded as boring as hell to me, as did everything after.

tortoise is great but i don't see the connection to stereolab

Emperor Tomato Ketchup and Millions Now Living share quite a bit stylistically, obv McEntire's production on ETK and the steve reich motorik of the tortoise album come from the same place and time.

TS: john cage bubblegum vs steve reich motorik

Pram are definitely the best (perhaps only?) point of comparison, not least in terms of that continual opening-up of the aesthetic over the course of the nineties.

I reckon Sound-Dust and especially Margarine Eclipse are excellent, but I stopped buying Stereolab records after that on the basis of some vague sense that I “had enough”, and I suspect that is a big part of many people’s sense that the band fell off quality wise - less to do with the actual quality of the albums and more to do with whether you feel there’s anything left to learn from them.

I was a heavy-duty McCarthy fan in the old days and only dipped in to Stereolab now and again through the 90s - my musical tastes and attention were elsewhere. I then married into a complete run of Stereolab LPs and have therefore got to know their work more or less all at once, and not in any order. I agree with Tim F - I like some of their records more than others but for me there's no steadily golden or un-golden periods.

The more Sean O' exerted his influence, the more I liked their albums. This all comes to a head on Sound Dust, which is one of my favorite albums of all time--the brilliant arrangements push it over the edge.

Broadcast have a lot in common w/ Stereolab, even when they don't sound the same. It's like the same hipster appropriation game but with different sources.

I've never posted on this thread. huh.

Saint Etienne have a lot in common with Stereolab!

On Super Electric (Switched On), is she saying Bones/Flesh or Bombs/Flash? I always thought she was saying 'some see the bombs, before they see the flash, some see the flash, before they see the bombs'. but google says its bones/flesh.

Pretty sure it's bones and flesh

classic later stereolab
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H652WrVSiLI

That's the only song on Fab Four Suture I think is great, and it's really, really great.

what's with this new thing i'm seeing everywhere about Dots & Loops being Stereolab's "pinnacle"? hasn't it been ETK forever?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G76i9M23W64

revisionist canon history, nothing new.

...we're getting closer and closer to cobra being the consensus pick...