Stereolab

STEREOLAB

Formed: 1991, South London, England

Members: Tim Gane, guitar, keyboards (born Barking, Essex, London, 12 July 1964); Simon Johns, bass; Laetitia (Seaya) Sadier, vocals, keyboards (born Paris, France, 6 May 1968); Andy Ramsay, drums, percussion, vocals. Former member: Mary Hansen, guitar, vocals (born Maryland, Queensborough, Australia, 1 November 1966; died London, England, 1 December 2002).

Genre: Electronica

Best-selling album since 1990: Dots and Loops (1997)

Hit songs since 1990: "Wow and Flutter," "Cybele's Reverie," "The Free Design"

Few bands manage to name themselves as fittingly as the British avant jazz-electronica-rock band Stereolab, which truly treats the process of making music as an experimental, carefully orchestrated process. Throughout the 1990s, the band released a handful of challenging art-rock albums that were critically appreciated. With cool, subdued vocals from French-born Laetitia Sadier, who alternates singing in French and English, they were the epitome of experimental, heavily produced, but always melodic electronic rock. Stereolab fuses the experimental and often futuristic looping and sampling that electronic music is known for with the improvisational tradition of jazz.

Stereolab formed in 1991 with primary songwriters Tim Gane on guitar and keyboards and girlfriend Sadier on vocals and keyboards. Their first two releases, Switched On (1992) and Peng! (1992), the latter of which was their official debut, earned them a devout following in the United Kingdom. Mary Hansen joined the band around this time as keyboardist as did Andy Ramsay, whose skillful, consistent drumming kept everything grounded. With the release of their first album together on a major label, Mars Audiac Quintet (1994), the first of many oddly titled albums, Stereolab emerged as an arty alternative rock band. At this point, Sean O'Hagan, who had been a full-time keyboardist with Stereolab, dropped down to part-time member to form his own group, the High Llamas. Stereolab has seen much ebb and flow in terms of personnel, but never to detrimental effects. Mars Audiac Quintet was well received and showed they were capable of writing a straightforward pop song. "Wow and Flutter" is driven by a catchy guitar riff and Sadier's cool singing of lines like "I thought IBM was born with the world / The U.S. flag would float forever." Other songs are far more esoteric and space age.

With their follow-up, Emperor Tomato Ketchup (1996), Stereolab started to hit their stride producing melodically engaging songs that could veer from jazz to hip-hop to electronic dance beats and back again. O'Hagan dropped back in for string arrangements. Their music influenced other bands from England, including trip hop acts Morcheeba and Portishead, though Stereolab pioneered the sound and most other groups fed from their energy. On Emperor Tomato Ketchup, Sadier sings mostly in French. Standout tracks include the string-tinged "Cybele's Reverie"; "Percolator" is a notable and effective display of the band's shuffling around time signatures.

Themes of Stereolab songs in English are loosely concerned with politics, existentialism, and personal freedom. There is a sense that the meaning must get lost in translation, as with "Spark Plug" from Emperor Tomato Ketchup, which features the lines "There is no sense in being interested in a child a group or in a society / There is no sense if one cannot see in them before anything else." In 1997 Stereolab continued the momentum with Dots and Loops, which brings in vibraphone, the warmth and fuzzy sound of Fender Rhodes' piano, and the welcome increase of songs in English, as in the lead-off track "Brakhage." The trumpet section on the French-sung "Miss Modular" adds a 1960s, Burt Bacharach feel, but the foreign language lyrics keep things somewhat obscure and inaccessible. The songs on Dots and Loops abandon the stiff structure of pop music and instead, like jazz compositions, opt for four-, five-, or seventeen-minute-long sonic extravaganzas, as in "Refractions in the Plastic Pulse." Stereolab shifts around playfully with time signatures in "Rainbo Conversation" and "Flower Called Nowhere."

Through the late 1990s, starting with Dots and Loops, Stereolab continued to release albums that solidified their reputation as an intellectual, jazz/electronica rock group, prone to noodling on a particular riff for minutes on end. This is especially evident in their 1999 Cobra and Phases Play Voltage in the Milky Night and in the dark, impressionistic Sound-Dust (2001). Sadly, in December 2002, Stereolab lost one of their longtime members, Mary Hansen, when she was knocked off her bicycle in London and died shortly thereafter.

Stereolab has built a formidable reputation with a unique style that combines jazz, electronic, and pop in an avant-garde sensibility.

SELECTIVE DISCOGRAPHY:

Mars Audiac Quintet (Elektra, 1994); Emperor Tomato Ketchup (Elektra, 1996); Dots and Loops (Elektra, 1997); Cobra and Phases Play Voltage in the Milky Night (Elektra, 1999); Sound-Dust (Elektra, 2001).

carrie havranek