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Stereolab | McCarthy | Herzfeld | Pimp | June Brides |
"Stereolab treat the music as furniture - as lithe, graceful and retro-futuristic as a Charles Eames chair. Anyone who thinks this quality disqualifies Stereolab from being art is a fool.
It
is precisely this quality that makes Stereolab art"
FLAGPOLE.COM
"Stereolab
are one
of
the
most
important and influential underground UK bands of the last decade"
VITAMINIC.IE
There's
nothing more boring
than recording a song and having it turn out exactly
as you imagined. That's not where my interest lies.
TIM
GANE
For a band whose "sound" is, at least to its fans and serious observers, instantly recognizable regardless of album or song, Stereolab is surprisingly mercurial. Listen closely to any two of their albums back to back, and the differences between them will begin to reveal themselves. The instruments are balanced differently; their owners play with rhythm like Maceo played with James Brown. They paint with a broad palette of tone and mood; they wrestle with a broad range of social issues. Try to pin them down on their much-vaunted ideological concerns, and they'll make a quick, slithering turn out from under you, claiming, as Tim Gane did during our conversation, that they never felt the way you deduced they felt. You've been misled. You're mistaken. Boom, flash, look at the monkey. Stereolab has slipped away again.
And yet, they remain recognizable, almost iconically so, because, wherever they wander, they're sure to leave clues to their whereabouts. While perhaps not card-carrying Commies, they do -- or at least, vocalist Laetitia Sadier's lyrics do -- consistently espouse a firmly left-of-center stance on everything from the efficacy of war in resolving international disputes (see: "Ping Pong" from Mars Audiac Quintet or "Les Yper Sound" from Emperor Tomato Ketchup) to the merits of socialized medicine (or rather, the lack of merit in most things commercial). Heavy shit, all of it, but rendered light as gossamer by their musical arrangements, which borrow liberally (small "l") from Latin jazz, exotica, modern composition, avant garde electronic music and, yes, good ol' rock 'n' pop. Heavy lyrics, digestible tunes. That's the key right there: subversion is Stereoloab's calling card.
SEAN
FLYNN
Choler Magazine
More...
Stereolab:
masters
of analog
drone.
Stereolab: champions of vintage keyboard gear. Stereolab: a band that
has made a career out of recording the same basic song over and over.
They made an indelible mark on the music of the nineties, evolving from
an indie sensation to a surprisingly credible major label act, and indeed
to a genre unto themselves.
SPLENDIDZINE
Splendid
Fanzine Interview with Stereolab
Mary
Hansen tribute - Guardian
Independent
Obituary
MP3: Unreleased 1990
Serge Gainsbourg track recorded in 1990 on 4 Track Cassette. Tim Gane, Laetitia Sadier, Andy Golding, G-Man. The idea was to record a proper version and release it on Midnight, but it sadly never happened. Laetitia later recorded this track with Luna in 1995.