Stereolab - Cobra and Phases Group Play Voltage in the Milky Night

I made my own version years ago. 12 songs, 52 minutes:

01 - Fuses
02 - People Do It All the Time
03 - The Free Design
04 - Blips, Drips, and Strips
05 - Italian Shoes Continuum
06 - Infinity Girl
07 - The Spiracles
08 - Op Hop Detonation
09 - Puncture In the Radax Permutation
10 - Strobo Acceleration
11 - The Emergency Kisses
12 - Come and Play In the Milky Night

The remaining 3 tracks are on a separate EP that I rarely if ever play.

Love this band.

 

Much shorter without Blue Milk!

 

One's mindset is a key part of wrapping one's head around this one. It's not really aiming for the gut or the heart or the head. You have to approach it since it won't reach out to grab you. Despite the many ornate colors, I find that it's often also opaque and inaccessible. Does anyone know how this one was recorded? Things layer on and on, though not with a clear sense of sonic drama. Elements are just kinda there. Often, the simultaneous disappearance of timbres is more impacting than the elements themselves had been. Those gaps and silences are worth their weight in gold.

Currently giving it another spin; cranking it loud to see what shines through. When I first bought this, I played it several times during midday and it just didn't register. Its merits only seem to crop up at nighttime for me. Late-night bachelor pad music for the insomniacs?

 

I kind of wrote it off at first listen,
Comparing it to tomato ketchup and dots but I'm going to check it out again after reading Some good things on this thread.
Btw your avatar is one of my favorite albums of all time, really life changing. Ever seen him live?

 

This is interesting. At the time, NME was shamelessly pushing the lad-culture-cool-britannia-music-of-the-people bandwagon, so a review like this is understandable, given the POW.

 

I love the groop, and I've always found it a rather difficult Stereolab album. The disparate approaches from track to track don't coexist too comfortably; it was like three EP sessions jammed together. I like the Beach Boysie and dreamier tracks. My iPod edit goes thusly... kicking-off with a mix that I did of the Uilab single, St. Elmo's Fire and including a couple of B-Sides from The Free Design single.

 

That must have been a fun festival. I love Deerhunter. I attended the Tortoise-curated ATP2001 at Pontin's in Camber Sands with the Television reunion and loads of other great artists.

 

My first Stereolab album, so I have a unique perspective. I love it, and always wondered why their other records didn't quite match it.

 

It was great, and also at Camber. The same weekend, I saw a 45 minute non-stop Deerhunter-Tom Tom Club jam, William Basinski doing a live version of Disintegration Loops, one of Electrelane doing glitch-techno with porn visuals, and the impossibly weird sight of Steve Reich and orchestra playing in a Pontins ballroom.

I went to about ten ATPs all told, and that was the last one (2013) before the wheels truly fell off the whole thing. Funnily enough, I did some session work a couple of years ago with someone whose band played that festival and they still hadn't been paid!

 

Not to derail the thread with ATP talk, but Stereolab were part of many festivals and curated one... Tim DJ'd at the 2001 event that I attended. The bill included Television, Tortoise, Boards of Canada, The Ex, Sun Ra Arkestra, Derek Bailey, Yo La Tengo, Autechre, Calexico, Broadcast... a wonderful array of artists. Three days of music WITH INDOOR ACCOMODATIONS for about £100 per person... it was quite a bargain for music fans in England. It cost me a bit more - I flew over from NYC to attend [what was purported to be] a one-off reunion of Television - but it was well worth it.

They tried to get the festival established in America and I went to the first two at Kutsher's Country Club. Those were big fun too, but I don't think either event was sold out. Tickets were limited to about 3000, but there was no advertising to speak of and the word of mouth didn't hit critical mass. I was amazed that they could mount such a professional festival with two stages given a total budget of less than $500,000. They pursued no sponsorship of any kind. The couple who ran ATP certainly had their hearts in the right place.

 

I think that's why they're seen as a sort-of nudge-nudge joke now rather than fraudsters - they didn't do it to fleece anyone, they just got in too deep too quickly. There are thousands of people with happy memories of Camber Sands and Minehead events; I'd almost certainly go again if anyone had the ability to resurrect the format.

Anyway, back to Stereolab...

 

(from NME review quoted above)

I would definitely buy this !

 

Hey can't believe another Hecker fan showed up here. It's my favorite album ever, and you're right it is life changing. No I haven't but I'd love to if he ever came near me. Have you? (sorry for the sidetrack guys but this is rare!)

 

That is a cool perspective! the album does suffer from some filler and lack of direction, but as I have noted above there are a number of very strong songs

 

Wish they'd release it on vinyl!
I've seen him twice it was mind blowing. Also incredibly loud which is not something I expected. Seems like he doesn't tour, just plays special places. Saw him in a church and a club. I'd almost make a trip out of it to see him somewhere haha. Sorry for
off-topic fan-ing, dudes!

 

I love Stereolab, and Cobra was my introduction. Cobra and Sound Dust are my favorites.

 

Since the day it was released, when I rushed out to buy it, I've alway felt Cobra was a step or two down from Dots and Loops, which I've always considered to be their absolute creative peak. Starting with Cobra, in my view, it was a gradual but steady downhill slide. That's not to say Cobra contains nothing of value - it's definitely got its share of good tunes. I just feel that it is far less cohesive than Dots and Loops, which may have been their most focused and consistent album to date, and more uneven.

Also, with each release leading up to Dots and Loops, to me it always felt like Stereolab were breaking new ground, reaching new creative heights, and finding new and exciting ways to evolve their sound, with an increasing affinity for gorgeous, sophisticated, jazzy melodies. But from Cobra onward, to me everything started to feel like caricature; like they were starting to merely retread and repeat themes and sounds they'd already explored, to the point where they eventually started sounding like a parody of themselves.

That's my (probably overly harsh) two cents, at least.

 

Agree 100%. The whole thing is very "dense". The artwork colours (brown and orange) suit the sounds perfectly.

 

Not to derail further from original topic but you were correct on the stamper info. Matrix matches the UK based on discogs info.

I hadn't listened to Dots and Loops in several years so I was going off of memory but played it this morning...now that my system is signifantly improved from my college/grad school days all i can say is WOW! Killer killer sound.

 

I sure miss when music writers had opinions. I don't think it's the best Stereolab record, but a Hitler comparison? Yikes!

 

Mr. Sharp (AKA Johnny Cigarettes):

http://www.johnnysharp.net/about.html

I get the sense that the review was not altogether serious--except in its gleeful showing-off of its own cleverness.

L.

 

A more measured live review from Johnny from a few years earlier:

Stereolab: Esquires, Bedford. By Johnny Cigarettes : Articles, reviews and interviews from Rock's Backpages.

Stereolab: Esquires, Bedford
Johnny Cigarettes, New Musical Express, 25 September 1993

STEREOLAB ARE now just about the perfect indie art rock band. That's not necessarily a compliment. It means they don't sell millions of records, you can't dance or mosh very well to it, and shagging to it is a bit of a tall order. But they are so many of the things wet dreams are made of for wannabe art-pseudish young people with skin problems.

For a start, they've got that essential, vaguely retro cool — all Velvet Underground and nicotine, Suicide and repetition. Spiritualized or The Mary Chain could just as easily sound like this with different raw materials to hand. They don't rock, nor do they just shoe-gaze — they politely swing their fringes like nice, bookish types. They have lots of intellectual and political pretensions that nobody notices (they have often talked of how they aim to release a pleasure drug in the brain triggered by repetition — art!), and they're teacher's pet students of pop aesthetics and history, hence the sublimely gorgeous ethereal, girl pop vocals.

They're now more impeccably stylised than ever, but not too beautiful — Laetitia is the embodiment of glacial, aloof icon cool in a white Dulux turtleneck (though cynics might argue that she dances like your school teacher at the bop) but the rest of the band look shabby and socially inadequate enough to retain their essential indie ambivalence. And it all sounds the same if you want it to.

You can love them or hate them to the core of their being for all of the above reasons. But it's undeniable that their sound is now approaching perfection. The trance-a-thons are being allowed to run away with themselves four minutes into their best songs, even mutating into speed-freaking, feedbacking wig-outs when they really forget themselves. Blinking strobe lights, presumably designed to enhance our cerebral harmony, fail to have the necessary effect but disturb you just enough to draw you into the trip. The pop harmonies and hooks are nailed down scientifically, and even the we-are-weird space-wank experimental slots (wisely curtailed live) follow a strict aesthetic code.

Apart from Laetitia, they have all the charisma of a set of 2Point4 Children character puppets, but we like that — no one wants to get too contrived (though secretly, of course, they are). But every musical and stylistic mediocrity has been bludgeoned so far out of sight that epic pop drugs like 'John Cage Bubblegum' and 'The Light That Will Cease To Fail' are the norm rather than the exception. Ultimately, where Stereolab used to be intermittently beautiful they're now a great rock and great pop experience simultaneously. And a drive through the desert on acid, of course.

At the suitably overkilled white-out end of the encore, a particularly tired and emotional observer cries: 'Stereolab, you're genius!' Not strictly true, but they're almost there.

© Johnny Cigarettes, 1993

L.

 

Finally found a pristine UK Duophonic of this and am now ready to revisit it. Strange that this album only had one contemporary vinyl release, the only "gimmick" being a limitation to 7000 copies.

If I like this, I will continue to explore the second half of the 'labs discography.

 

I hate them and this is pretty much why.

 

And if you don't, drop me a DM to rehouse that LP...