The future of Stereolab

Clear vinyl doesn’t have inferior sound quality

I already have these on CD

Also on Bandcamp where you can get coloured FLACs guaranteed to sound the same as black FLACs.

black FLACs

This feels like a racial slur, even though I know it isn't.

Actually I think clear vinyl has *better* sound quality than black vinyl. All vinyl is clear until they put the color in it. or something. I don't know. heard that once

The additive that makes it black (graphite?) supposedly gives the vinyl a smoother texture or finer grain or something. So it's claimed, anyway.

Not graphite exactly, this stuff - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_black

Seems like it might add to durability if nothing else.

All vinyl is clear until they put the color in it

https://media0.giphy.com/media/26uTsgxxplCBOasmc/giphy.gif

Durability of any record is much more dependent how you (and your record player) treat the record than what colour it is.

Well there's damage from ill treatment and then there's wear which is unavoidable over time unless you use a laser stylus. Just because one might be potentially more pronounced doesn't mean the other isn't a factor and one that can be minimised.

Anecdotally coloured or clear vinyl often seems to have more surface noise but there can be other reasons for this.

I replaced / got rid of a glitter Emperor Tomato Ketchup and a gold Transient Random Nose Bursts because they weren't too good fwiw.

On a more practical level, finding where the tracks are on a clear vinyl Aluminum Tunes will be fun.

lol

So these are going to sell out in less than a week right? Can't afford any of them right now

My observation is that the Stereolab vinyl reissues at my local record stores never shift, while secondhand copies of CDs disappear in days.

Used copies of the Switched On CDs are usually priced at $5.99 round here btw, though Aluminium Tunes rarely shows up.

the vinyl reissues put out by 1972 or whatever are notoriously bad. mastered from CD's iirc. and yeah i've observed the same at record stores here

2008 reissue of Peng! (on Too Pure) has been sitting in my local store for years. And it's not that expensive - $25 I think. I doubt vinyl reissues of the albums are in the works because little demand and CDs so much cheaper. But good on them for reissuing the Switched On discs and I hope they continue with making the extraneous stuff more affordable. Hopefully other stuff that's hard to find on physical format will come out. Like a massive outtakes box and live recordings. There's few bands with such a broad range of unavailable or hard-to-find stuff.

I have the Peng! reissue. It's pretty terrible.

Of course there's no need to agonise over vinyl sound quality for music released post-1990. Buy a CD.

The range on vinyl is wider, there are some truly great ones and some really bad ones. I think Stereolab absolutely deserves quality vinyl versions.

I bought what I assume is the Peng! reissue when I was in London in early 2017. Sounds OK to me but mastered way too quiet - I'm also not as familiar with that record as the others. Best part about buying that (at a FOP) was standing around and a very enthusiastic employee coming up to me and talking about Stereolab. He'd seen them dozens of times going back to the early 90s, recommended Laetitia's new record. Great record store conversation.

Peng! sounds best played quietly.

A ‘Switched On Vol 4’ would be nice.

The Cavern of Anti-Matter albums sound fantastic on vinyl, particularly the first two.

black FLACs

and the nightmare fighters

Tim Gane has talked in interviews about wanting to release better vinyl reissues than the awful 1972 ones. The fact that these new ones are coming out through Duophonic has me hopeful that more will follow.

So I pulled out my vinyl copy of Peng! because I feel like I owe it another listen. I somehow never realized it came with complete liner notes, I believe written by Tim, that discuss the recording process, plus notes on each individual track. I have never seen such detailed making of details from them before. I guess Too Pure did the reissue, I had thought they were defunct. Looking at Discogs, I'm not the only one who thinks it is a bad pressing.

I've only ever heard Peng from my CD and it's always sounded weird and muted to me, always figured that's just the sound of that record. Like more lo-fi than most of the stuff on Switched-On Vol 1 which I think is older material?

Some real interesting stuff in here. Apparently Sterling Morrison is his all-time favorite lead guitarist, he cites Modern Lovers as an influence and says they were consciously trying to sound like MBV on some tracks.

dan, it does sound pretty muted and low fi, but the vinyl sounds much worse

The original CD is crystal clear by comparison

The fact that it was Too Pure, not Duophonic gives me hope for the Switched On series

I have a Too Pure reissue of Peng on vinyl and it sounds terrible. I love that album but i'd rather listen to it on Spotify. Will buy the remaster if it comes out.

Watching a bunch of youtubes from the ETK tour. Kind of amazing how well documented it was. That was my favorite version of their live band.

Saw that tour in New Orleans. So good. Wish I had seen them on later tours too.

New Cliff variant for your collection.

https://d1rgjmn2wmqeif.cloudfront.net/r/b/107780.jpg

…which I got from the new-look groop website: https://stereolab.ochre.store

Yay web 1.0

This thread and some of the replies within have been one of the few good faith engagements w/this wreath business.

🐦[So what we can say about Corbyn’s conduct? He clearly had a vague idea of the cemetery and who was commemorated there, he got the details wrong. There’s nothing to show that he thought he was commemorating the Munich massacre perpetrators. BUT >> https://t.co/Q44wmBAJVu🕸
— Yair Wallach (@YairWallach) August 13, 2018🕸]🐦

I always had trouble parsing that image. Is he pointing a gun at you, is that a ring, what?

I always thought it was a gun based on the cover of Peng!
https://archive.beggars.com/wp-content/uploads/Stereolab-Peng.jpg

It is the final frame of a already-existing cartoon series where a man's finger turns into a gun and then shoots. The next frame in the series is the band's cover for their album "Peng!"-- German for "bang", I believe

it's a finger transforming into a gun

http://www.koly.com/stereolab/ex-cliff.php

Ah, here you go. Some fine morning reading: https://dangerousminds.net/comments/the_intriguing_origins_of_cliff_the_cartoon_character

xp

Apols for my random accidental post up there.

Sad to see she's playing this festival in Israel in September, along with many other artists (Kamasi Washington, Flying Lotus, Of Montreal, Faust, Battles, etc.) I would've expected more from (that is: declining to play). Ugh.
https://bdsmovement.net/meteor

Duophonic reissues of the 3 Switched On volumes on clear vinyl out today. Ordered Refried Ectoplasm and Aluminum Tunes. Hoping Amazon will get some copies of Vol. 1 in stock too.

25% discount to Spiked subscribers!

Sorry. I'll fuck off now!

I've pre-ordered from Warp. Hopefully they arrive today or tomorrow. I'm curious if they'll sound any better. On a related note, I've got an original clear vinyl pressing of Refried Ectoplasm I need to sell now if anyone is interested. Would also trade it for a single I need.

We'll see. I have high hopes since they expressed a strong desire to have quality vinyl versions.

I received Aluminum Tunes yesterday, sounds fantastic. I had forgotten how much classic material is on it because I associate a bunch of it with the original EPs. For example, Music for the Amorphous Body Study Center is one of my absolute favorites, a really cool and mellow transitional piece between MAQ and ETK. It showed they were starting to explore new directions, but wasn't as radical a shift as ETK.

Refried Ectoplasm is currently AWOL, don't know what happened. I plan to order Switched On soon. I saw on Amazon that they have listings for clear vinyl releases of Peng! and Space-Age Bachelor Pad Music coming in November. I assume these are part of the same series, but I don't really know anything about how this all came about, if anything was remastered, or if they are putting out the whole catalog.