The future of Stereolab

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.

i got my refried ectoplasm a couple days ago, still waiting on my aluminum tunes.

hopefully they are repressing MAQ / ETK / D&L next

how's Refried Ectoplasm sounding? I'm very worried Amazon is going to surprise cancel my order.

should I sell my 1972 reissues of the main Stereolab albums? i.e. Transient thru Sound-Dust. I could use the cash assuming Duophonic is going to reissue them properly within the next year or two.

honestly, it isn't really clear to me what the story is behind these new reissues. I haven't been able to find out any information about whether they were actually remastered or are different in any way from other pressings. Also have no idea if they are going to reissue any of the Elektra stuff.

According to here: https://stereolab.ochre.store/ ...

The Switched On compilation reissue series is out now, via Duophonic UHF Disks. Consisting of 1992's Switched On, 1995's Refried Ectoplasm [Switched on Volume 2] and 1998's Aluminum Tunes [Switched on Volume 3], each disk has been remastered by Calyx Mastering of Berlin.

well the 1972 reissues were mastered from CD's (hence the shortened version of "Blue Milk") so anything is an improvement, especially if it's coming from Duophonic. I doubt Gane would sign off on anything of dubious sound quality, especially after he called the 1972 reissues "completely unlistenable" or whatever.

Cool, that's what I would assume too. Don't know if those 1972 Elektra ones are going to be replaced soon or not.

refried ectoplasm sounds pretty good to my ears!

i bet it would sound even better if it wasn’t on cruddy clear vinyl

finally showed up, listening now, sounds good. Is there something particularly bad about clear vinyl? Isn't just the same as black vinyl without any coloring added?

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

according to Pikey, "Calyx remastered. Beggars reissues. Couple slight artwork amendments: from memory, address and publishing (info)"

I'll be very glad to replace my terrible copy of Peng!

Is there something particularly bad about clear vinyl?

not really just being picky purist

Apologies if this has already come up, but was looking into Peter Strickland (Katalin Varga, Berberian Sound Studio, The Duke of Burgundy)'s new thing In Fabric yesterday, since he's pulled in such great collaborators for his previous films (respectively: a mishmash of Broadcast/Ghost Box's Roj and Nurse With Wound, Broadcast, and Cat's Eyes), and In Fabric's original score will be a Cavern of Anti-Matter release!

I got all three in the mail last night and I have to say, i'm more than a little disappointed. Switched On sounds pretty bad. Inside cuts on both sides are unlistenable, High Expectations vocal sounds terrible, lots of sibilance all over. The album doesn't sound that dynamic anyway, but this pressing is no improvement on my other copy. Also, the 'Limited Edition' tag was clearly only a marketing ploy, as these albums are absolutely everywhere in mass quantities. I ended up paying much, much more to get these from Bleep than I would have paid at my local shop. Aluminum Tunes sounded OK, but I only played 2 of the 3 records. Didn't play Vol. 2 at all so can't comment. Maybe my copy of Switched On just needs to be cleaned properly, but it mostly sounded terrible. Why hasn't anyone from the band come out and endorsed these represses? I feel like the fans are getting duped on this shit.

Yikes! I haven't heard Switched On yet. Aluminum Tunes sounds good to me. Refried Ectoplasm is fairly good, although a bit on the harsh side. Haven't heard any obvious distortion on either.

Oh no that is terrible news

I got all three a few days ago but haven’t listened... I have an original Refried, I will compare, but it’s really Switched On I was most excited about

Searching around to see if others have run into the same issue (I'm in the middle of rewiring my whole audio setup and haven't had a chance to check the records), I am just now learning about the apparent propensity PVC sleeves have for damaging vinyl over the long term, so that's going to be a fun expedition over the next week or so...

I noticed a few skips on the inner grooves of side one of ‘Switched On’, wasn’t sure if it was just my copy. Haven’t cleaned it.

On a related note, I think i'm going to pull the trigger on an Okki Nokki soon. I love Switched On so much. This poor pressing is really disappointing to me.

are the others sounding ok to you?

Switched On is my favourite Stereolab release and Au Grand Jour* one my my favourite all-time tracks

I've only played discs 1 and 2 of Aluminum Tunes (in addition to both sides of Switched On), but they sounded good. I believe there was IGD on one side of the Aluminum Tunes, but it wasn't as bad as Switched On. I don't have the OG Aluminum Tunes, but I do have the OG for Refried Ectoplasm, and I'll compare the OG to the clear remaster tonight if I have time.