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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Format:Audio CD
I found Chemical Chords too poppy when I first heard it; then became horribly addicted and played it to death. Not Music grabbed me first time and for me it's simply the best thing they've done (and I've been a follower since Refried Ectoplasm). New listeners - start here. Old listeners - you won't be disappointed. Essential Stereolab.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Audio CD
I went to Laetitia's gig in Southampton UK (not the greatest venue for her melancholy solo stuff but she stood on that stage like an angel on a pile of dung) and she spoke to me afterwards. She had to, I insisted. As she produced her CDs from a case I gushed and blushed like a twelve year old at a Beatles concert in the early sixties. She commiserated when I failed to get a photo with her due to flash failure and she didn't seem to mind when I declined to buy a CD because I already had one. She was incredibly charming and funny and managed to make me feel like I was behaving completely normally. My point being there was a nucleus of cool professional distance about Laetitia that for me epitomises the Stereolab sound - Not Music being no exception.
Not Music creates distance with its effortless precision rhythms and a voice that seems to be floating down from some celestial stratosphere. Effortless. (You get the impression Stereolab could play for a week straight without breaking a sweat. You don't find yourself imagining any long haired gasper in sleeveless T-shirt sweatily pummelling their drum set, nor in your mind's eye do you see a furrow browed numpty with protruding tongue anxiously awaiting the tricky bit on their synth. No way would you be waiting for Laetitia to belt one out a la some X factor shouter.) Effortlessness = cool in my opinion and the cool creates the distance because cool is always unstudied and out of reach.
Effortless, though? Of course not. There is a lot of effort here, what you would expect from a band that makes sure you get your money's worth. There is a denseness that at first makes you think "what's going on here then? I don't understand it yet but I like it." You have to go back and go back to it and unpick. There's the complicated rhythms to keep your feet tapping and your head nodding, there's the tunes, the melodies, the hum-alongs. Then there's the hooks and the loops, the blips and the beeps. There's the surprising tempo changes, the droning white space where you can reflect for a while before it all starts again. There's the bits that make you go 'Ahh". And that should be enough, but it's not because then you can start to think about the song titles and the lyrics and you will eventually decide that maybe you ought to try writing some poetry.
Despite being the band's umpteenth album Not Music sounds nose in rose fresh. You may go "oh, that bit reminds me of when they..." or "doesn't that sound a lot like..." or whatever, but none of that bothers me in the slightest. All art is derivative, it has to be or you would get nowhere and Stereolab tug the past along in their slipstream as their nosecone ploughs red hot into the future.
The Trip is great too by the way. You can't buy this and not that, no way.
Not Music creates distance with its effortless precision rhythms and a voice that seems to be floating down from some celestial stratosphere. Effortless. (You get the impression Stereolab could play for a week straight without breaking a sweat. You don't find yourself imagining any long haired gasper in sleeveless T-shirt sweatily pummelling their drum set, nor in your mind's eye do you see a furrow browed numpty with protruding tongue anxiously awaiting the tricky bit on their synth. No way would you be waiting for Laetitia to belt one out a la some X factor shouter.) Effortlessness = cool in my opinion and the cool creates the distance because cool is always unstudied and out of reach.
Effortless, though? Of course not. There is a lot of effort here, what you would expect from a band that makes sure you get your money's worth. There is a denseness that at first makes you think "what's going on here then? I don't understand it yet but I like it." You have to go back and go back to it and unpick. There's the complicated rhythms to keep your feet tapping and your head nodding, there's the tunes, the melodies, the hum-alongs. Then there's the hooks and the loops, the blips and the beeps. There's the surprising tempo changes, the droning white space where you can reflect for a while before it all starts again. There's the bits that make you go 'Ahh". And that should be enough, but it's not because then you can start to think about the song titles and the lyrics and you will eventually decide that maybe you ought to try writing some poetry.
Despite being the band's umpteenth album Not Music sounds nose in rose fresh. You may go "oh, that bit reminds me of when they..." or "doesn't that sound a lot like..." or whatever, but none of that bothers me in the slightest. All art is derivative, it has to be or you would get nowhere and Stereolab tug the past along in their slipstream as their nosecone ploughs red hot into the future.
The Trip is great too by the way. You can't buy this and not that, no way.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Audio CD
Typical stuff from Stereolab, i.e. excellent, floaty, dreamy, twisted pop rhythms. Nothing much different from the last few Stereolab albums perhaps, indeed this "album" is actually 12 tracks from the sessions that produced their last album, Chemical Chords. However, none of that is to say that it is not a very good record. Filled with typical Stereolab rhythms, complemented excellently by Laetitia's beautiful golden voice. Not likely to bring in many new converts to Stereolab, it will definitely appease existing fans, who wait anxiously to see if their self-imposed hiatus will end. A class act.
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