Is 'Dots and Loops' the pinnacle of Stereolab's output to date?

Heh. ILM has been a battleground over this before -- it breaks down between those who love the album and those, like myself, that consider it to be by and large a disaster thanks to John McEntire's snore-rific production on most of the cuts. No guesses as to which side I'm on.

Finest hour? Well I've been listening to a great unofficial live compliation called The Tahan Project that's been circulating through the on-line fanbase and right now I might say that!

in particular:

Music For The Amorphous Body Center
Space Age Bachelor Music

i love every release up to this, culminating in emperor tomato ketchup and, as hstencil says, fluorescenses in 96. i dont like any of the post-dots and loops work at all, and find this so disappointing compared to the great records before this

i don't really have a favorite album of theirs... many of them are pretty different and i like certain ones better at different times.
m.

I think the fact that I dislike everything after it too (and my love of Mouse on Mars) means I can't blame the production, though at the time I wanted to and I suppose I do find a lot of McEntire's work snoozesome, though not all of it and not even all of it since D&L.

(Listening to Hanley's cover of it made me appreciate the composition even more than before.)

If you like Broadcast, you'll like The United States of America. But you'll probably like Stereolab, too.

go for:

emperor tomato ketchup
space age bachelor pad music
music from the amorphous body study centre
switched on
switched on volume 2- refried ectoplasm

That's a little unfair since Broadcast have only released singles and a single album, and Stereolab has such a large discography. They're pretty sonically different anyway, even if they both have "retro" electronic sounds and at least one female singer.

They contribute music to a track on the new Common album. That's gonna be interesting.

julio: i'm assuming that by 'diluted' you mean 'made, like, actually good'

i'll get my coat.

My favorite Stereolab would be the assemblence of all the 1995 era material from "Aluminum Tunes"... like the "Amorphous" EP and all the side things combined. (They all fit conveniently on a CD-R, tee hee)

I was just trying to work out my personal ranking, and I think it goes like this:

Emperor Tomato Ketchup
Mars Audiac Quintet
[upper limit of Transient Random's possible rankings]
Dots and Loops
Aluminum Tunes
Peng!
Switched On
Refried Ectoplasm
Space Age Bachelor Pad Music
[lower limit of Transient Random's possible rankings]
Sound-Dust
Cobra and Phases

1. Mid-period Lab (Transient Random through Dots and Loops) / 2. Early Lab (Peng through Transient Random) / 3. Late Lab (everything after Dots and Loops)

Suggested compilation on the way...

I haven't listened to DOTS AND LOOPS for years and years, but I remember thinking that I was hoping for a Stereolab album and got a Tortoise album instead. Kind of like when I bought the third Spinanes album.

They used to put on a freaking great live show back in 94-96 - I saw them play a show with Unrest, and then with UI/DJ Spooky, and both were just astonishingly fun - but recent records have sounded less energetic and made me think their live shows would be less good. Anyone want to speak out for/against recent live Stereolabness?

It's been foreverish (something like six or seven years) since I listened to the record, but as I recall my main frustration was the movement from the forwardish propulsive rhythm of earlier 'Lab records to a more scattered, "jazzy" rhythm, the latter of which is more in keeping with Tortoise's rhythmic approach than Stereolab's old rhythmic approach.

I actually liked Tortoise a lot at the time. (By the time the Spinanes album came out, and the relatively unique sound of STRAND was replaced with yet another Chicago-based rhythm sound, I was substantially less patient.) I went into the record hoping, and actually expecting, that I'd like it. But I thought his work with Stereolab was like crossing chocolate with garlic aioli - just because you like them both separately doesn't mean they should be combined.

Again, who knows what I'd think if I listened today. Don't have a copy of it, though.

I don't think anyone's denying that! What's being questioned are the results.

peng! is fine but distinctly weaker than everything around it (i think the main reason low fi ended up so low on my list is just the second half of "(varoom!)") but there's still a few great tracks like "peng! 33" and "the seeming and the meaning"

Y'all made me curious re: how the album/EP results from Moka's ballot-based poll a decade ago compare.
(Apparently 34 ballots, and probably 5 ballot slots per ballot.)

ALBUM | YEAR | POINTS | # VOTES | #1 VOTES

1 Emperor Tomato Ketchup 1996 863 26 4
2 Transient Random-Noise Bursts with Announcements 1993 752 23 4
3 Refried Ectoplasm (Switched On Vol. 2) 1995 660 19 6
4 Mars Audiac Quintet 1994 558 17 3
5 Dots and Loops 1997 533 15 5
6 Sound-Dust 2001 444 13 5
7 Cobra and Phases Group Play Voltage in the Milky Night 1999 300 9 2
8 Peng! 1992 268 8 2
9 Switched On Vol. 1 1992 231 7 1
10 The Groop Played Space Age Batchelor Pad Music 1993 183 6
11 Oscillons from the Anti-Sun 2005 168 5
12 Aluminum Tunes 1998 132 4 1
13 Fluorescences EP 1996 97 3
14 The First Of The Microbe Hunters 2000 89 3
15 Chemical Chords 2008 72 2
16 Music for the Amorphous Body Study Center EP 1995 64 2
17 Fab Four Suture 2006 61 2
18 Super 45 40 1 1
19 Low Fi EP 1992 36 1
19 The Free Design EP 1999 36 1
21 ABC Music 2002 33 1
22 Instant 0 in the Universe EP 2003 30 1
23 Margerine Eclipse 2004 28 1

People are always down on Microbe Hunters, but "I Feel The Air (Of Another Planet)" is a perfect song.

such a big discography really likely needed more than 5 ballot places, but still idk how margerine eclipse only got 1 vote

"i feel the air (of another planet)" is the best thing on microbe hunters, probably because it was an outtake from dots & loops they had lying around. i'd like microbe hunters more if "outer bongolia" wasn't 1/4 the running time

iirc tim said at some point that he'd like to do an oscillons reissue but the main obstacle is the cost of a vinyl release

I feel like the distance between their best and worst work is so narrow that we should just kick back and enjoy it all.

This is the correct take

i mean it's just octaves but "autobahn" is closer to "olv 26" than "metronomic underground"

argh just forget what I write in this thread, it’s too early in the morning and apparently I need coffee to remember what an octave interval sounds like

i could easily believe that "metronomic underground" is "the revolution will not be televised" combined with something else though idk what the other part is lifted from

Yoko Ono - Mindtrain?

that's 100% it yeah

People are always down on Microbe Hunters, but "I Feel The Air (Of Another Planet)" is a perfect song.

― Throw It Down Binman (Camaraderie at Arms Length), Saturday, 4 April 2026 22:15 (yesterday)

The title reminds me of Kiki Dee

I wanna say that there's a Nancy Sinatra song that has the "Metronomic Underground" vibe but the title escapes me.

Oh, it's this one! But really just the beginning part:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NnFqCN8cZzo

for me, dots starts with a fantastic one two punch near the top of their catalog and after that wayyyy too much soggy bossa sans bite. refractions is interesting for being so long yet not useless, but it’s just a lounge jenny ondioline at the end of the day, and i never want to hear it the way some days jenny just hits this crazy spot (neu meets yes) that i feel deeply in my bones had to exist, a weird monument, a pointless obelisk. again, parsec is notable: the best jungle programming in an indie rock song but… this is just not something i feel i need in my life. after that a few more gauzy swishes of the bacharach meets library music nylon ribbons and i’m left wondering why they bothered and where the tasty distorted guitars and sick hypnotic grooves went. i caught them live for the second time on this tour and naturally there was a bit of pleasant distortion and ramshackle presentation that salvaged this stuff bit clearly that was not intentional, just a limitation of the format tim and sia were pushing against.

but it’s an album i can at least enjoy when it’s on; by the time we get to cobra the cheesy sounds are overwhelming, it’s 90% sugary confection that gives me a stomachache and makes my mind wander. i dig the title track, the groove there isn’t too sickly sweet.

i think i like about 10% of stereolab tracks from there on and have little time for the reunion disc. so dots is bittersweet, it’s the beginning of the end. reminds me a bit of the vibe shift yo la tengo offered with and then nothing, where darkness and harsh noise was increasingly just a rare palate cleanser instead of kind of the whole point of the cocktail.

I can’t really hang with the whole “oooh we’re doing drum n bass” thing on Parsec, that song would do better with a samba rhythm or something and it really seemed beneath the groop to be just following trendy electronica sounds or whatever, idk

like, thank god there’s no stereolab take on dubstep or something (there’s not, is there)?

People are always down on Microbe Hunters, but "I Feel The Air (Of Another Planet)" is a perfect song.

Yeah I love this one. “I Feel The Air” is wild, it sounds like old Star Trek music or something! My favorites are “Nomus and Phibus”, “Household Names”, and “Retrograde Mirror Form”

No, but you gotta remember the production is half Tortoise and half Mouse on Mars, it’s pretty clear which tracks are which. Probably the most producer-influenced of their records?

oops xxp

Little mention of the storming “Diagonals” which is often my favourite

D&L certainly feels dated in a way that seems unique in their catalog. I like it but its one of the albums I put on the least

always been a big Microbe Hunters fan, incl "Bongolia", and yeah "Feel the Air" is one of their all time best imo

Live version of Parsec with skittering DnB drums replaced by Andy Ramsey's muscular beat rules.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67wWZvnWDC4

“dated” seems a pretty ridiculous description to apply to dots & loops but it’s my favorite record by this band so ymmv

Dated maybe doesn't make sense for a band that is so rooted in retro references, but D&L is unique in their catalog for being the one time they dabbled in contemporary electronica and dance tropes, and I think those things specifically did not age super well because they were so much of their time and very much not Stereolab-ish things. Though, to be clear, I love this record and think it has a whole bunch of their greatest songs.

Margarine Eclipse maybe also has some electronic/dance stuff going on, but it feels much more integrated into their sound rather than added on top of things that were probably originally conceived differently.

well i guess perspectives on this sort of thing can be wildly different bc i think the late-'90s era when everyone was incorporating dance music structures into their music produced some of the most enduringly perfect-sounding records ever xp

some people can be like, that's obv a trend of the era, whereas i'm like, goddamn i wish we were still there

it can be both! "dated" doesnt have to be pejorative, you can like it more or less but we can all agree that it sounds contemporary to its time in a way the other records dont

like if i'd never heard them before and you played me Cobra, Chemical Chords and Instant Holograms and asked me to ID which decade they each came from i'm not sure i'd be able to do it. but if you play me a record with "Parsec" on it i'm like "this was recorded in chicago in the late 90s right?"

At the time, I was a huge Stereolab fan and also big into jungle/DnB DJs and events. It was jarring to hear Stereolab suddenly doing this because it felt like they were getting out of their lane and jumping onto a current trend without engaging with the scene that was built around it. I don't dislike it, but it was an unusual step for them.

The title reminds me of Kiki Dee

When Microbe Hunters was released I had largely drifted away from indie and was actively seeking other things to listen to. The titles "I Feel The Air Of Another Planet" and “Retrograde Mirror Form” were taken as unexpected but incontrovertible evidence that Stereolab had turned to Schoenberg and Webern et al at much the same time I had, and perhaps that they endorsed such things. (I don't doubt that there are other possible explanations lol.)

'rainbo conversation' is my fav track on d&l, spellbinding

mouse on mars were good man

It’s hard for me to think of Dots and Loops as “dabbling” in contemporary styles, because of how each side sounds like a long suite - the album is extremely thoroughgoing in its commitment to creating a vibe.

Emperor Tomato Ketchup has much more of a “let’s do this, now let’s do that” feel, although those swerves equally suit the showcase feel of that album.

i love "rainbo conversation", one of their very best. both breezy and intense! i wish they'd done more in that particular vein

I think those things specifically did not age super well because they were so much of their time and very much not Stereolab-ish things

i think they made them stereolab-ish things and i would have loved it if they'd followed d&l by getting even more into messing around with electronics. it all feels like a fairly natural progression of ideas to me. they were interested in sampling and collage, and dnb as a genre was interested in similar processes, so them turning their hand to it makes perfect sense from that perspective. i really like "parsec", they somehow did dnb in like 10/4? my only issue is the song itself is kinda slight but that's ok because everything else is great. the live version where they don't attempt the breakbeat just doesn't work the same way

i think most of their stuff sounds fairly of its era so i don't think the breakbeats on d&l are really unique there. it's just like, less niche?

i don't really get the complaint about cobra and phases group being too sugary, like that's the album that opens with "fuses" and has "italian shoes continuum" (which i can't stand)

but it also has a lot of their very best material, the last three tracks in particular

Peng! might be their best album, it still sounds like it exists outside of time, somewhere up in the stars. so cutting, celebratory, and gloriously atheist. couldn't imagine anything I wanted to hear more in 1992 except maybe the first two Felt albums

Their mystic era, also when I’d never heard of, or heard, their references. Love it.

Dated maybe doesn't make sense for a band that is so rooted in retro references, but D&L is unique in their catalog for being the one time they dabbled in contemporary electronica and dance tropes, and I think those things specifically did not age super well because they were so much of their time and very much not Stereolab-ish things. Though, to be clear, I love this record and think it has a whole bunch of their greatest songs.

― whimsical skeedaddler (Moodles), Sunday, April 5, 2026 1:12 PM (two days ago) bookmarkflaglink

This isn’t a really a brag, but maybe because I didn’t/don’t know the reference points well, they don’t stick out — and it’s just a great Stereolab record

speaking of mouse on mars — this new thing is ... awesome? Like if Lee Scratch Perry had joined Can in 1976.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Xh4_72b8Mo

people who miss “rocky” Stereolab may like the recent single

"cloud land"? i love it. sounds very etk to me.

yep

relistening to Cobra right now and I see what bugged me about it back when it was released—most of it hits me as a more sugary Dots, but the last three songs (Strobo Acceleration, The Emergency Kisses, Come and Play in the Milky Night, are more in line with the aesthetic of D&L and just as good as anything on that record.

Peng! might be their best album, it still sounds like it exists outside of time, somewhere up in the stars. so cutting, celebratory, and gloriously atheist. couldn't imagine anything I wanted to hear more in 1992 except maybe the first two Felt albums

I re-listened a few days ago and was like "huh this is kind of perfect, I wonder why I've underrated it for so many years"

the greatness of this band can best be summed up in the huge variety of opinions on which work of theirs is best, plus generally everyone just arriving at the conclusion that they rule.