Stereolab: Classic or Dud

Anyway--Stereolab: Classic.

These records are all classics:
Peng!
TRNBWA
ETK
D&L
Sound-Dust

Plus all their singles comps are great, and they are a terrific live band.

Cobra and Phases could almost be a classic as well, but it needs to be about 4 or 5 songs shorter, and the production needs to be improved in some places.

The more recent stuff, Margerine and Fab Four Suture, are a bit weaker for me. I miss the presence of Mary and I think the production is way too busy. However, the tracks on these two came across really well in a live setting.

stereolab's music takes me to a future place that we shall never know, a clean beautiful one.

Plastic Mile is the best song of all time.

They're pretty classic. Cobra and Phases was the first album I picked up by them, almost 10 years ago back in high school, and I really loved it. Picked up Dots and Loops shortly after, but it didn't really stick, and after that I don't think I listened to anything by Stereolab for about 8 years.

Then just recently, I found used copies of Transient and Emperor Tomato, and these are great, especially ETK. Hearing these motivated me to finally throw on Dots and Loops the other day, after giving up on it for so long, and it sounded pretty awesome.

Dots and Loops is a grower, and a masterful piece of work.

Pick up Margerine Eclipse, everyone seems to like that. A nice combination of pretty much every style the groop has explored.

I really, really love "Fab Four Suture."

"Plastic Mile" is indeed amazing but "Whisper Pitch" and "Excursions Into Oh, A-Oh" are actually the best songs of all time.

Dots and Loops sounds amazing to me now -- we didn't know how good we had it back when this thread started.

Proof that Dots and Loops is a god: 'The Flower Called Nowhere,' 'Miss Modular,' 'Refractions in the Plastic Pulse.' The other tracks are merely perfect. I desperately want a remaster of this, due to the horrible tape dropouts toward the end.

Fab Four Suture: 'Whisper Pitch' is the only track I skip. 'Excursions' as a ringtone gets the whole office grooving. And 'Plastic Mile,' um, yeah. If Jeff Lynne were French and female/falsetto and a genius he may well have invented this song.

It would be relevant at this point to mention that Miss Modular got me into Stereolab and Dots & Loops consummated the relationship.

Dots and Loops is indeed godhead. Totally my fave by them, but damn if I don't like every single thing they've done.

You and I are the trust fund kids of ilx.

it's weird to think that the point where i effectively gave up on stereolab is the point where others discovered them

ya totally

'gave up on' isn't terribly accurate but still.. i still remember how much D&L disappointed me at the time

xpost

i listened to cobra and phases for the first time in a long time recently and damn if it's not my least favourite lab album by a long margin

burn it

with the use of fire, not duplicate

PLEASE not duplicate

i've always loved cobra... i think there was more character on that record than some of their other more recent records.

i agree with the sentiment that throwing together some kind of best of/singles compilation would precipitate a masterpiece. they could be nearly life altering for like two tracks and then just pretty good for the rest of a record. it's a shame because they're a wonderful band, but because i think they lack that "HOLY SHIT!" record, you can feel the obscurity as only a matter of time. (probably true of 99.9% of all groups. just about everybody trends to dud.)

m.

Cobra would have been a much better album if it were engineered properly. It's all midrange and no bass. That alone kills it for me.

That's not to say that many of the numbers are not really very good and beautiful in their own right.

You and I are the trust fund kids of ilx.

Lol, I suppose this is a reference to the sheer amount of material Stereolab has put out? I actually just own the studio albums and Aluminum Tunes and an EP or two.

Cobra & Phases is my least favorite Stereolab album by a long shot, but I dearly love "Infinity Girl" and "The Free Design." The rest is Jim O'Rourke disappearing up his own asshole, unfortunately.

Most underrated: Margarine Eclipse

Lol, I suppose this is a reference to the sheer amount of material Stereolab has put out?

More the fact that we both defy popular odds in (a) liking everything Stereolab has ever done and (b) liking anything Stereolab has ever done.

Dots and Loops is fantastic music to listen to while working. Especially via headphones on a plane. I mean this as highest praise. ETK is not as good, too fast and insistent. But I love ETK nonetheless.

I'll never forget what we have, A.A.

xpost

Post-TNRB Stereolab inspires creativity. I thought it was just me, but recently I've read accounts from people for whom it dislodges writer's block etc.

It is very visual music, in a trippy retro-futuristic sense.

most of my stereolab listening was to self-burned compilations, taking maybe 5 or 6 songs from each burst of album / ep releases, until 'margarine eclipse' came out which is the only one I've listened to all the way through more than four times

I hated them at first because they were so blatant about what they were ripping off, then I grew to love them because they were _so_ blatant about what they were ripping off

I hated them at first because they were so blatant about what they were ripping off, then I grew to love them because they were _so_ blatant about what they were ripping off

Sterolab introduced me to the music they were ripping off.

Me too, and I didn't like it. One of the Neu albums had me hooked for about 12 minutes though.

And for cred points I'm going to attempt to spell this: KRZYSZTOF KOMEDA

I, too, bailed after _Dots And Loops_ (which I probably haven't listened to since it came out) but the post D&L singles on the _Oscillons From The Sun_ box are good and don't seem out of place in the non-chronological sequence of the box.

"Cobra" is truly the most underrated Stereolab album. I really loved it when it came out 8 years ago, warm and easily loveable songs. 'People Do It All The Time' is perhaps my favourite Stereolab song.

Cobra's still by far my favorite but i don't really use the word 'underrated' and certainly wouldn't in this case; most haters just like their stereolab rawkier and more 'muscular', which is fair enough really, different strokes (although i don't understand the 'bad engineering' argument, thankfully).

Adding to the Cobra love -- fine, fine album, and unjustly overlooked.

The issue with Cobra was not that people wanted Stereolab "rawkier and more muscular" -- the people who preferred them sounding like a live band got their disappointment moment with D&L,* which was sleek and spacious and full of pin-point programming. The issue with Cobra was that after years of making pop that felt kind of otherworldly -- there are some very strange songs on ETK, and the old moony, outer-space feel on D&L -- they picked an inopportune moment to make a record that really, really didn't; it was the first time they felt earthbound, like they really might just be an ordinary band playing light funk.

* = or even earlier; the noise and heavy drone were gone by the end of Mars Audiac Quintet, and plenty of people went lukewarm on them when they switched from that to pop swing

And I don't say that to argue about whether Cobra was good or not, just to explain why (it seems to me) some people were disappointed with it. It probably didn't help that each of the previous few albums had added some big new dimension to their sound, and then Cobra seemed to retrench and bland out around exactly the stuff some people saw as kind of a given from them.

ok then the haters is just about some bullshit lol. wow though re: otherworldly i get the exact opposite reaction of what you just said, being totally honest here. cobra and d&l are all cooing, liquid, 8 dimensional futurebeings and sound dust is dem beings touching down/falling from grace, everything before or after is er, unusually inventive indie rock.

I should clarify that I don't hate Cobra at all, but in the Stereolab catalogue it's a bit duff. Those who have heard no other album really should.

I maintain, however, that its bassless, midrange-heavy production works fiercely against it.

and 'Italian Shoes Continuum' and 'Puncture in the Radax Permutation' are amongst the most atmospherically astounding numbers the band has ever recorded.