The future of Stereolab

I like the Lo-Fi challop ;-) I'm not all that familiar with it but have listened on YouTube while dithering over spending about a tenner on the CD (it's generally gone up since then) and not been sufficiently won over.

aw, I love it. probably my favorite EP of theirs

iirc Low Fi was Mary's debut which makes it notable. In retrospect I don't remember loving it as much as the pre-Mary singles at the time... though I'd need to revisit as this era was almost 30 years ago. How did Low Fi fare in the Stereolab poll?

It's probably my favorite ep as well -- it's got all the sides of 92-era Lab on one slab (a VU ripoff, some political lyrics I didn't comprehend at age 19, noisy drone loop, etc). But if it were replaced with "mountain" and "john cage bubblegum" repeated on both sides I probably wouldn't complain.

_a reissue of their weakest album_

Yep, I'd concur with that - Microbe Hunters was the final straw for me, I was convinced it was all over until Sound dust made everything okay again.

Now & again I give it a spin to see if I'd completely misjudged (the cobra & phases syndrome) and every time it sounds like an endless conveyor belt of bland jelly mould filler

last 2 mins of Elektro from Lo-Fi are so good, I wish that MBVish guitar that comes in the end went on for longer
would love a vinyl pressing of Oscillons but it's probably impractical, it would be what, 4 LPs? 5?

Love Microbe Hunters, and Outer Bongolia is a top three track of theirs imo. But no need to include it here when it's so ubiquitous as a second hand CD. A vinyl reissue would be nice.

Yeah I ended up with two CD copies myself, without trying.

Lol I've bought at least 3 CD copies or maybe even 4, because it's always like $2.

Ha, thoroughly enjoying microbe hunters, I take it all back. In what universe is it an ep tho....

household names ffs

nomus et phusis, retrograde mirror form <3

Microbe Hunters might be their least essential release but it still has great songs like “I Feel the Air of Another Planet" and "Retrograde Mirror Form" which would justify - at least for me - to buy it separately.

Saying it’s their least essential release doesn’t mean it’s bad. I’d actually recommend it on that basis alone; if you think this is how they sound at their most uninspired, imagine how the rest of their discography sounds like.

I see "Dimension M2" has been released as a "single", in so far as that means anything these days; it's on Spotify. Nice enough. From the 2005 Disko Cabine comp (Stereo Total, Etienne Charry and a bunch of other folks I've never heard of).

Stereolab/NWW falling out well-documented, I think (maybe that's all water under the bridge), but SHM isn't likely to appear on a Stereolab comp. I wish I hadn't ruined my Uilab 12" by trying to clean it.

SHM/tripping is $10 on NWW bandcamp page as previously mentioned, as are the other collabs (which i think ate all on previous SO comps anyway). shorter track has been out digitally before iirc. might even have got mine from mike.

i've checked and my uilab cd is sitting over there between the Turn On cd and Ultra Vivid Scene. probably haven't listened to it in 15 years.

(yes, SHM on 20 years of Wire comp and 30 years of Rough Trade comp)

Turn On! I'd forgotten about that. I assume you're not using Unicode ordering on your CDs, so all your U2 is down the end, before the Vs. :)

slander.

(actually, i do have blood red sky and war, both on vinyl, maybe both still in GL20, but either way they aren't filed with the cds. i think there may be a track or two on charity cds)

xxp btw AFAIK the 10:40 version of SHM on the Wire 20 comp is the same as what's on The Swinging Reflective i.e. an edit of Trippin' With The Birds. I don't know what's on the Rough Trade xomp but it's likely to be the same.

I'm going to re-evaluate Low-Fi, let's see if I love it now.

SHM b/w Trippin has been my favorite Stereolab thing since a decade ago at least (and probably favorite NWW thing). Do they have more stuff that sounds similar?

NWW's "Cooloorta Moon" EP, "Rock 'n' Roll Station" CD and maybe the "Huffin' Rag Blues" CD come closest IMO

Today’s Lab Report mentions that work is now starting on Switched On 5.

Great! Hopefully that'll clear most of the remaining decks.

my LP copy of vol 4 should be arriving today :)

"Electrically Possessed" is out and I must say that the Microbe material fits in well. I don't think I'd heard it since it came out and since then I've become more familiar with the original texts that Stereolab cribbed from, it all works very nicely for me now.

The Microbe material might get a bit of rehabilitation from being included here. It has been undervalued.

got my limited colour vinyl copy today.
my name is written (v. neatly!) in ink along the inner spine, didn't know they were doing that - is it a reselling countermeasure or something?

Still waiting on my CD copy.

Got my bog-standard 2CD digipack this weekend. I've bought the other reissues on vinyl, but for those I usually just had the original CD while in this case I have several of the original 7"s. Includes a sticker with a checklist (yes, Cliff... I did my duty) and a 10% off coupon for the website. Would prefer that the track info wasn't all under the disc trays, as you need to remove both discs in order to learn the sources of either one. Would've preferred a mini-gatefold with inner sleeves, but maybe those are more expensive to produce.

The personalization on the color vinyl versions was a reselling countermeasure, but since then they've announced a new way to deal with limited editions that is not personalization, so I'm not sure how successful it was. I'm still waiting on my personalized version to arrive.

i'm out of the loop. i didn't even know this got released. instant purchase.

okay, finally got this and listening, and jeez was the microbobe hunters stuff always this good??? i guess it got lost for me between cobra and sound-dust pretty quickly but man it sounds great right now. otherwise, lots of "new to me" rarities. all great.

god “household names” is so so great!!

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

Fall tour back on for US/Canada

Yes, please. pic.twitter.com/ptfW63f86l

— Bruce Levenstein (@BruceLevenstein) March 1, 2022

Deradoorian will be the opening band, nice

Ghost Power (Tim Gane/Jeremy Novak) have an album coming out soon.

Here's a single they put out a little while back

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCg9-xmyNH8

Sounds straight-up Library. I dig it.

My copy of the Ghost Power LP arrived today (release date is Friday, so, um, in about 30 minutes). It's really good. I'd describe the music roughly as the mid-point between the 'In Fabric' OST and Chemical Chords era Stereolab. Recognisably Tim for the most part, therefore, but with some new twists - and the closer is an epic, ambient space symphony that sounds nothing like what I just described.

Excited for this and Astrel K

It *is* quite library-ish innit. On the short tracks at least.

Damn, I had no idea this project even existed until now

it's up on bandcamp now, too. Looking forward to receiving my lp!

Ooh good to know about this.

I was both overwhelmed and underwhelmed by the last Cavern of Anti-Matter release but I still make time for anything Tim does.

Hmm, I think this is just OK.

I’m honesty I stopped about halfway through and put on Beak> instead.

some good songs on the ghost power lp, even if it does sound like incidental music from lodge 49

I'd describe the music roughly as the mid-point between the 'In Fabric' OST and Chemical Chords era Stereolab.

Well have you heard Dymaxion because it also sounds a lot like Dymaxion

What I like about this is, the brickwork-groove of Dymaxion and the spaciousness of Cavern aren't the most compatible styles, and there's an interesting kind of awkwardness about fitting them together into a cohesive form.

this is a bummer

Due to unforeseen circumstances, @deradoorian will no longer be able to support Stereolab on their upcoming tour dates in the US and Canada in September / October 2022.
Expect news of a replacement support act soon. https://t.co/zBwucEdmqK

— Stereolab (@stereolabgroop) May 26, 2022

Switched On Volume 5 to be announced later this week.