Stereolab for Crossover

Stereolab's most recent lineup consists of Gane and Sadier along with Andy Ramsay (drums), Joseph Watson (keyboards/vibraphone) and newest addition Xavier Muñoz Guimera (bass/backing vocals). The predictable result of a band founded by an insatiable record collector such as Gane, Stereolab fuse a number of eclectic influences into a gorgeous, hypnotic tapestry, folding complex music and ideas into compact, poppy songs. Stereolab reconcile the motorik repetition of krautrock legends Neu! and Can with their fellow-travellers in the Velvet Underground alongside the lounge and easy-listening stylings of Esquivel and Burt Bacharach, adding further influences from funk, Canterbury, yé-yé, jazz, Tropicália, the Beach Boys, electronic music like Kraftwerk and Suicide and minimalist music a la Terry Riley and Steve Reich. Their retro-futurist aesthetic is buttressed by the use of vintage synthesizers and keyboards from Farfisa, Moog and Vox, adding to their signature sound. Stereolab are known for the left-leaning philosophical bent of their lyrics, inspired by situationism and surrealism and sung dispassionately by Sadier in both English and French, with bandmate Mary Hansen's backing vocals entwined with hers in counterpoint. Songs like "Ping Pong", "Slow Fast Hazel", "Crest" and "The Noise of Carpet" address topics like Kondratiev waves, historical materialism, the spectre of revolution and resisting cynicism and political detachment; despite their anti-capitalist sentiments, the band deny being influenced by Marx, with Sadier citing greater inspiration from ex-Trotskyist philosopher Cornelius Castoriadis and postmodernist Guy Debord.

The sound of their early years was defined by a relatively-straightfoward and droning space age pop, featuring the near-ubiquitous presence of motorik drum patterns inspired by Klaus Dinger, first delivered by Joe Dilworth and later Ramsay, who joined in 1992. After making their introduction with a handful of singles and EPs in 1991, Stereolab released their demo album, Peng!, via Too Pure in 1992, with the inaugural volume of rarities series Switched On arriving several months later. In between was the Too Pure-issued EP Low Fi, the first to feature permanent fixture Ramsay and Australian guitarist/singer Hansen, who gave a new depth to the band's sound when pairing her sing-song backing vocals against Sadier's stoic Nico-like lead. The following year's EP, The Groop Played "Space Age Batchelor Pad Music", showed their experimental 1950s exotica fusion taking shape, with this era's lineup consisting of Sadier, Gane, Hansen and Ramsay along with bassist Duncan Brown and multi-instrumentalist Sean O'Hagan of the High Llamas. The EP garnered enough positive underground press to lead Stereolab to their first major-label deal with US label Elektra Records, which would co-release the band's next seven LPs with Duophonic, starting with 1993's Transient Random-Noise Bursts with Announcements. True to the album's title, the LP is a feat of melodic noise-pop, famous for its eighteen-minute kraut-shoegaze centrepiece "Jenny Ondioline." The sextet followed the album's success with Crumb Duck, a collaborative EP with British kraut-damaged industrial project Nurse With Wound. Steven Stapleton initially turned down Gane's request to produce Peng!, but thrilled the longtime Nurse With Wound fan by agreeing to remix their material on the condition Stereolab could only hear the reworked music upon the EP's release. Stereolab commenced recording for their third album Mars Audiac Quintet in spring 1994, recruiting keyboardist Katharine Gifford while O'Hagan returned to the High Llamas, though he would later participate as session musician for each subsequent LP. Having taken their trademark style to its apex with their new album, exhausted by endless touring and noting scores of imitators latching onto their style, the band sought to challenge themselves creatively, and collaborated with the New York sculptor (and avowed Stereolab fan) Charles Long, scoring his exhibit on the 1995 EP Music for the Amorphous Body Study Center.

In 1996, recording sessions for a tribute compilation cover of the Godz' "ABC" broke Gane's year-long writer's block and galvanised the band into adopting a new aesthetic direction, almost entirely shedding the motorik rhythm from their template for the rest of their discography in favour of loops, odd time signatures and a more eclectic and colourful sonic palette. Building on the promise of their strings-laden work with Long, Stereolab reemerged as a full-fledged progressive rock unit with 1996's Emperor Tomato Ketchup, which was mostly produced by Tortoise's John McEntire, who befriended the band when his former project Gastr del Sol opened for them in Chicago. McEntire would provide either direct or co-production for Stereolab's next three records as well as auxiliary instrumentation, accompanying kindred post-rock spirits as they advanced deeper into prog. Stereolab found even more critical praise with 1997's Dots and Loops, which showed an even further refinement of their blend of accessible pop structures and avant-garde tendencies, introducing more electronic and bossa nova elements, with McEntire joined on production duties by German kraut-adjacent duo Mouse on Mars. The band collaborated again with Nurse With Wound for 1997's Simple Headphone Mind remix EP, on which original material was once more surrendered to the whims of Steven Stapleton to be heard only upon its release.

After seven months of touring, Stereolab took a break while Gane and Sadier celebrated the birth of their son. Aluminum Tunes, volume three of the Switched On series, was released in 1998, along with the Fires EP from Uilab, a collaborative project recorded in conjunction with New York City post-rock band Ui (featuring no fewer than four interpretations of Brian Eno's "St. Elmo's Fire"). Stereolab returned in 1999 with their sixth LP, Cobra and Phases Group Play Voltage in the Milky Night, which proved to be the band's most critically divisive record due to its jazz-prog maximalism. McEntire co-produced the album with former Gastr del Sol bandmate Jim O'Rourke, and the influence of their respective projects is keenly felt across its material. Its companion EP, The First of the Microbe Hunters, was released the following year. McEntire and O'Rourke returned once more for 2001's Sound-Dust, seen positively as a return-to-form by press who felt its predecessor was too unfocused and cluttered.

2002 was a year of great tribulation for the band, which saw both Gane and Sadier's divorce as well as Mary Hansen's death in a tragic accident. After a period of mourning, Stereolab decided to continue forward, their studio and live sound greatly impacted by the disappearance of Hansen's harmonies and guitarwork. 2003's EP Instant 0 in the Universe was their first release without Hansen, and their eighth full-length, 2004's Margerine Eclipse, was dedicated to her memory. The next few years were devoted to issuing compilations, with 2005's Oscillons from the Anti-Sun and 2006's Fab Four Suture released through Too Pure in the wake of Elektra's merger into Alantic Records, and 2006's Serene Velocity released via Rhino. Stereolab further dialled back the intense experimentation of their past several albums for 2008's Chemical Chords LP, released via 4AD and recorded with a lineup of Gane, Sadier and Ramsay accompanied by keyboardist/percussionist Joe Watson, bassist Simon Johns and horn player Joe Walters. The band entered an indefinite hiatus in 2009, with Sadier pursuing a solo career and Gane reuniting with Joe Dilworth to form electronic krautrock trio Cavern of Anti-Matter in the interim. Stereolab's tenth album, Not Music, was released in 2010, featuring songs from the Chemical Chords recording sessions. Sadier contributed an Aksak Maboul cover for their 2016 16 Visions of Ex-Futur remix record, in belated acknowledgement of Marc Hollander's uncannily similar sonic template predating Stereolab by nearly a decade ("They're sort of our parents...").

Stereolab reactivated in 2019, touring around the world for the next four years, with a brief interruption due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The quartet also concurrently remastered and reissued their back catalogue, releasing volumes four and five of Switched On as well as deluxe editions of their LPs from Transient Random Noise-Bursts to Margerine Eclipse, loaded with outtakes, alternative versions and acoustic demos.

Aped by indie artists and sampled by hip-hop producers, Stereolab's effortless sensuality and cool has reached a wide and diverse array of players in and outside the prog sphere like Sufjan Stevens, Broadcast, Bruno Pernadas, Vanishing Twin, Blur, Pharrell Williams, The Snobs, Sei Still, J Dilla, Pavement, the Internet's Steve Lacy, Atlas Sound, Tyler, the Creator and many others. Fans of Stereolab's lush and expansive beauty will find common cause with similar PA artists such as Pram, Aksak Maboul, Aquaserge, Can, L'Rain, Tortoise, Catherine Ribeiro + Alpes, Tom Zé, Roberto Cacciapaglia, Art Bears, Os Mutantes and even Yes.

"Slow Fast Hazel"

^My favourite song of theirs and the one which stopped me in my tracks years ago. It's not hard to hear Jon Anderson singing this.

^This one's a close second. It's a demo of their song "International Colouring Contest" and only appears on a bootleg, but is indicative of the almost prog-folky style found on the demos included in the expanded editions of the band's studio albums; even unadorned, their virtuosity is on display in pursuit of absolute beauty.

^More ethereal beauty with some of those "je nais se quois" Yes vibes.

"Dots and Loops" (1997)

"Emperor Tomato Ketchup" (1996)

"Cobra and Phases Group Play Voltage in the Milky Night" (1999)

"Aluminum Tunes [Switched On Volume 3]" compilation (1998)

"Electrically Possessed [Switched On Volume 4]" compilation (2021)