Coordinates | 33°51′35.9″N151°12′40″N |
---|---|
Name | Stereolab |
Background | group_or_band |
Years active | 1990–2009 (indefinite hiatus) |
Origin | London, England |
Associated acts | McCarthy, Monade, Snowpony, High Llamas, Imitation Electric Piano |
Genre | Post-rock, indie rock |
Label | Duophonic, Elektra, Too Pure, 4AD |
Current members | Tim GaneLætitia SadierSimon JohnsJoseph WatsonJulien Gasc |
Past members | Mary Hansen (deceased)Andy RamsaySean O'HaganDuncan BrownKatharine GiffordMorgane LhoteDominic JefferyRichard HarrisonJoe DilworthMartin KeanGina Morris |
Website | stereolab.co.uk }} |
Stereolab are an alternative music band formed in 1990 in London, England. The band originally comprised songwriting team Tim Gane (guitar/keyboards) and Lætitia Sadier (vocals/keyboards/guitar), both of whom remained at the helm across many lineup changes. Other long-time members include Mary Hansen (backing vocals/keyboards/guitar), who played with the group from 1992 until her accidental death in 2002, and Andy Ramsay (drums), who joined in 1993, and who is still in the official line-up.
Called "one of the most fiercely independent and original groups of the Nineties", Stereolab were one of the first bands to be termed "post-rock". Their primary musical influence was 1970s krautrock, which they combined with lounge, 1960s pop, and experimental pop music. They were noted for their heavy use of vintage electronic keyboards, and their sound often overlays a repetitive "motorik" beat with female vocals sung in English or French. Stereolab often incorporated socio-political themes into their lyrics. Some critics say the group's lyrics carry a strong Marxist message, and Gane and Sadier admit to being influenced by the Surrealist and Situationist cultural and political movements. Gane is sceptical of labels such as "Marxist pop", and defends the band against accusations of "sloganeering".
Although many of the band's albums have been underground hits, they never found larger commercial success. The band were released from their recording contract with Warner Bros. Records when Warner's imprint Elektra Records folded. The release was reportedly due to poor record sales, and since then Stereolab's self-owned label, Duophonic Records, has signed a distribution deal with Too Pure. Duophonic holds the copyrights to the band's recordings, and on the label the band have released many limited-edition records. In 2009, Stereolab announced via their website that they were going on indefinite hiatus.
Stereolab followed up with another EP, Super-Electric, and a single, "Stunning Debut Album" (not actually their debut or an album). The band's early material was rock and guitar-oriented; of Super-Electric, Jason Ankeny wrote in Allmusic that "Droning guitars, skeletal rhythms, and pop hooks—not vintage synths and pointillist melodies—were their calling cards ..." In 1992 Stereolab's first full-length album, Peng!, and first compilation, Switched On, were released on independent label Too Pure. Around this time, the lineup coalesced around Gane and Sadier plus vocalist Mary Hansen, drummer Andy Ramsay, bassist Duncan Brown, keyboardist Katharine Gifford, and guitarist Sean O'Hagan of the 1980s famed Microdisney duo. Hansen, an Australian, had been in touch with Gane since his McCarthy days. After joining, she and Sadier developed a style of vocal counterpoint that distinguished Stereolab's sound until Hansen's death ten years later in 2002. O'Hagan would later leave to form The High Llamas, but would frequently return to contribute to Stereolab's records.
Beginning with their 1993 EP Space Age Bachelor Pad Music, the band began to incorporate easy-listening elements into their sound. This release raised Stereolab's profile and landed them a major-label American record deal with Elektra Records. Their next album, 1993's Transient Random-Noise Bursts with Announcements, was their first American release under Elektra, and became an underground hit in both the U.S. and the U.K. Mark Jenkins commented in The Washington Post that with the album Stereolab "continues the glorious drones of [their] indie work, giving celestial sweep to [their] garage-rock organ pumping and rhythm-guitar strumming". In the U.K. it was released on Duophonic Ultra High Frequency Disks, which is responsible for domestic releases of Stereolab's major albums. Mars Audiac Quintet makes heavy use of vintage electronic instruments, and also contains the single "Ping Pong", which gained press coverage for its allegedly explicitly Marxist lyrics. After releasing a 1995 collection of singles and B-sides called Refried Ectoplasm: Switched On, Vol. 2, Stereolab followed with an EP titled Music for the Amorphous Body Study Center. This EP was their musical contribution to an interactive art exhibit put on in collaboration with New York City artist Charles Long.
Stereolab's 1996 album, Emperor Tomato Ketchup, was a critical success and was played heavily on college radio. Krautrock techniques were still present, but the band stirred the pot with hip-hop sounds and complex instrumental arrangements. Stephan Davet of French newspaper Le Monde claimed to see musical influences as diverse as The Velvet Underground, Burt Bacharach, and Françoise Hardy on the album. John McEntire of the band Tortoise assisted with production and also played on Emperor Tomato Ketchup, while Katharine Gifford was replaced by Morgane Lhote before its recording, and bassist Duncan Brown by Richard Harrison afterward.
Dots and Loops was released in 1997, and was Stereolab's first album to enter the Billboard 200 charts, peaking at #111. Barney Hoskyns wrote in Rolling Stone that with it the group moved "ever further away from the one-chord Velvets drone-mesh of its early days" toward easy listening and Europop. A review in German newspaper Die Zeit echoed this observation, claiming that in Dots and Loops Stereolab transformed the harder Velvet Underground-like riffs of previous releases into "softer sounds and noisy playfulness". Contributors to the album once again included John McEntire, along with Sean O'Hagan of The High Llamas and Jan St. Werner of German electropop duo Mouse on Mars. An unsigned NME review said that "this record has far more in common with bad jazz and progressive rock than any experimental art-rock tradition." In a 1999 The Washington Post article, Mark Jenkins asked Gane about the album's apparent lack of guitars; Gane responded, "There's a lot less upfront, distorted guitar ... But it's still quite guitar-based music. Every single track has a guitar on it." Stereolab added a new bassist, Simon Johns, for the Cobra and Phases Group ... tour. Critic Joshua Klein said that "the emphasis this time sounds less on unfocused experimentation and more on melody ... a breezy and welcome return to form for the British band." Klein also commented that "never has it been harder to discern just what [Sadier] is singing, but rarely has her gibberish sounded so pleasant."
On 9 December 2002, longstanding band member Mary Hansen was killed when struck by a truck while riding her bicycle. Born in Maryborough, Queensland, Australia, Hansen earned the most attention for her vocal work with Stereolab, although she also played the guitar and keyboards. The music journalist Pierre Perrone said that Hansen's "playful nature and mischievous sense of humour came through in the way she approached the backing vocals she contributed to Stereolab and the distinctive harmonies she created with Sadier." (Future album and concert reviews would mention the effects of Hansen's absence.) In a 2004 interview, Sadier said that "Our dedication to her on the album [2004's Margerine Eclipse] says, 'We will love you till the end', meaning of our lives. I'm not religious, but I feel Mary's energy is still around somewhere. It didn't just disappear." That year, Sadier's side-project, Monade, released their debut album Socialisme Ou Barbarie: The Bedroom Recordings. Both the name of the group and the title of the album were references to the work of Greek-French intellectual Cornelius Castoriadis.
The full-length album Margerine Eclipse followed in 2004 to generally positive reviews, and peaked at #174 on the US Billboard 200. The track "Feel and Triple" was written in tribute to Hansen; according to Sadier "I was reflecting on my years with her ... reflecting on how we sometimes found it hard to express the love we had for one another." Kelefa Sanneh argued in Rolling Stone that Margerine Eclipse was "full of familiar noises and aimless melodies". Margerine Eclipse was Stereolab's last record on their American label Elektra Records, which closed down in 2004. Future material would be released on Too Pure, the same company which released some of the band's earliest material.
The album was followed by Oscillons from the Anti-Sun; a 2005 three-CD and one-DVD retrospective of the group's rarer material. Monade's second album, A Few Steps More, also appeared that year. In 2005 and 2006, Stereolab released six limited-edition singles which were collected in Fab Four Suture, and contained material which Mark Jenkins thought continued the brisker sound of the band's post-Hansen work. Serene Velocity, a "best-of" compilation focusing on the band's Elektra years, was released in late 2006. By June 2007, Stereolab's lineup comprised Tim Gane, Lætitia Sadier, Andy Ramsay, Simon Johns, Dominic Jeffrey, Joseph Watson, and Joseph Walters. The band had finished the production of their next album, entitled Chemical Chords, which was released in August 2008 on the 4AD label. The release of the album was followed by an autumn tour of Europe and the United States. They toured Australia in February 2009 as part of the St Jerome's Laneway Festival
In April 2009, Pike announced a pause in the band's career together for the time being. After 19 years, he stated they felt it was time to take a rest and move on to new projects. In November 2010, Not Music, a collection of unreleased material which was recorded at the same time as Chemical Chords, was released.
Lætitia Sadier's bilingual French and English vocals have been a part of Stereolab since the beginning.
In interviews, Gane and Sadier have discussed their musical philosophy. According to Gane "to be unique was more important than to be good." On the subject of being too obscure, he said in a 1996 interview that "maybe the area where we're on dodgy ground, is this idea that you need great knowledge [of] esoteric music to understand what we're doing." In the same interview Sadier responds to Gane, saying that she "think[s] we have achieved a music that will make sense to a lot of people whether they know about Steve Reich or not." and for Sadier, "you trust that there is more and that it can be done more interesting."
Stereolab's album and song titles occasionally reference avant-garde political groups and artists. Gane said that the title of their 1999 album Cobra and Phases Group Play Voltage in the Milky Night contains the names of two Surrealist organizations, "CoBrA" and "Phases Group".
A variety of artists—musical and otherwise—have collaborated with Stereolab. In 1995 the group teamed up with sculptor Charles Long for an interactive art show in New York City, for which Long provided the exhibits and Stereolab the music. In the 1990s Stereolab and veteran industrial band Nurse With Wound released two limited-edition records together; both contained Nurse With Wound remixes of original tracks provided by Stereolab.
Stylistically, music journalist J. D. Considine credits the band for anticipating and driving the late 1990s revival of vintage analog instruments among indie rock bands. Indie rock band Pavement (who also toured with Stereolab) acknowledged the group's sound on their song "Half A Canyon." Stereolab alumni have also founded bands of their own. Guitarist Sean O'Hagan went on to form the The High Llamas, while keyboardist Katharine Gifford created Snowpony with a former member of My Bloody Valentine. Sadier herself has released three albums with her four-piece side-project Monade, whose sound Mark Jenkins called a "little more Parisian" than Stereolab's.
Despite earning critical acclaim and a sizable fanbase, commercial success eluded the group. Early in their career, their 1993 EP Jenny Ondioline entered the UK Singles Chart, but financial issues prevented the band from printing enough records to satisfy demand. When Elektra Records was closed down by Warner Bros. Records in 2004, Stereolab was dropped along with many other artists, reportedly because of poor sales.
;Chart data | publisher=All Media Guide, LLC | work=Allmusic | title=Charts & Awards (Stereolab) | accessdate=10 June 2007}}
;Articles and reviews | publisher=All Media Guide, LLC | work=Allmusic | title=Review (Super-Electric) | accessdate=30 May 2007}} | publisher=All Media Guide, LLC | work=Allmusic | title=Biography (Stereolab) | accessdate=25 May 2007}} | publisher=All Media Guide, LLC | work=Allmusic | title=Review (Cobra and Phases Group Play Voltage in the Milky Night) | accessdate=27 May 2007}} | publisher=All Media Guide, LLC | work=Allmusic | title=Review (Sound-Dust) | accessdate=1 June 2007}} | publisher=All Media Guide, LLC | work=Allmusic | title=Review (Emperor Tomato Ketchup) | accessdate=1 June 2007}} | publisher=All Media Guide, LLC | work=Allmusic | title=Review (Wowee Zowee) | accessdate=26 May 2007}} | publisher=All Media Guide, LLC | work=Allmusic | title=Review (ABC Music: The Radio 1 Sessions) | accessdate=1 June 2007}} | publisher=All Media Guide, LLC | work=Allmusic | title=Review (Miss Modular) | accessdate=30 May 2007}} | publisher=All Media Guide, LLC | work=Allmusic | title=Song Review (Ping Pong) | accessdate=25 May 2007}} | publisher=All Media Guide, LLC | work=Allmusic | title=Biography (Monade) | accessdate=1 June 2007}} | publisher=All Media Guide, LLC | work=Allmusic | title=Review (Fab Four Suture) | accessdate=25 May 2007}} | publisher=All Media Guide, LLC | work=Allmusic | title=Review (Margerine Eclipse) | accessdate=3 June 2007}} | publisher=All Media Guide, LLC | work=Allmusic | title=Review (Mars Audiac Quintet) | accessdate=1 June 2007}} | publisher=All Media Guide, LLC | work=Allmusic | title=Review (Transient Random-Noise Bursts With Announcements) | accessdate=31 May 2007}} | publisher=All Media Guide, LLC | work=Allmusic | title=Biography (McCarthy) | accessdate=30 May 2007}} | publisher=All Media Guide, LLC | work=Allmusic | title=Biography (The High Llamas) | accessdate=26 May 2007}}
Category:Musical groups established in 1990 Category:English indie rock groups Category:English post-rock groups Category:Musical quintets Category:Flying Nun Records artists Category:Drag City artists
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