Is 'Dots and Loops' the pinnacle of Stereolab's output to date?

Heh. ILM has been a battleground over this before -- it breaks down between those who love the album and those, like myself, that consider it to be by and large a disaster thanks to John McEntire's snore-rific production on most of the cuts. No guesses as to which side I'm on.

Finest hour? Well I've been listening to a great unofficial live compliation called The Tahan Project that's been circulating through the on-line fanbase and right now I might say that!

in particular:

Music For The Amorphous Body Center
Space Age Bachelor Music

i love every release up to this, culminating in emperor tomato ketchup and, as hstencil says, fluorescenses in 96. i dont like any of the post-dots and loops work at all, and find this so disappointing compared to the great records before this

i don't really have a favorite album of theirs... many of them are pretty different and i like certain ones better at different times.
m.

I think the fact that I dislike everything after it too (and my love of Mouse on Mars) means I can't blame the production, though at the time I wanted to and I suppose I do find a lot of McEntire's work snoozesome, though not all of it and not even all of it since D&L.

(Listening to Hanley's cover of it made me appreciate the composition even more than before.)

If you like Broadcast, you'll like The United States of America. But you'll probably like Stereolab, too.

go for:

emperor tomato ketchup
space age bachelor pad music
music from the amorphous body study centre
switched on
switched on volume 2- refried ectoplasm

That's a little unfair since Broadcast have only released singles and a single album, and Stereolab has such a large discography. They're pretty sonically different anyway, even if they both have "retro" electronic sounds and at least one female singer.

They contribute music to a track on the new Common album. That's gonna be interesting.

julio: i'm assuming that by 'diluted' you mean 'made, like, actually good'

i'll get my coat.

My favorite Stereolab would be the assemblence of all the 1995 era material from "Aluminum Tunes"... like the "Amorphous" EP and all the side things combined. (They all fit conveniently on a CD-R, tee hee)

I was just trying to work out my personal ranking, and I think it goes like this:

Emperor Tomato Ketchup
Mars Audiac Quintet
[upper limit of Transient Random's possible rankings]
Dots and Loops
Aluminum Tunes
Peng!
Switched On
Refried Ectoplasm
Space Age Bachelor Pad Music
[lower limit of Transient Random's possible rankings]
Sound-Dust
Cobra and Phases

1. Mid-period Lab (Transient Random through Dots and Loops) / 2. Early Lab (Peng through Transient Random) / 3. Late Lab (everything after Dots and Loops)

Suggested compilation on the way...

I haven't listened to DOTS AND LOOPS for years and years, but I remember thinking that I was hoping for a Stereolab album and got a Tortoise album instead. Kind of like when I bought the third Spinanes album.

They used to put on a freaking great live show back in 94-96 - I saw them play a show with Unrest, and then with UI/DJ Spooky, and both were just astonishingly fun - but recent records have sounded less energetic and made me think their live shows would be less good. Anyone want to speak out for/against recent live Stereolabness?

It's been foreverish (something like six or seven years) since I listened to the record, but as I recall my main frustration was the movement from the forwardish propulsive rhythm of earlier 'Lab records to a more scattered, "jazzy" rhythm, the latter of which is more in keeping with Tortoise's rhythmic approach than Stereolab's old rhythmic approach.

I actually liked Tortoise a lot at the time. (By the time the Spinanes album came out, and the relatively unique sound of STRAND was replaced with yet another Chicago-based rhythm sound, I was substantially less patient.) I went into the record hoping, and actually expecting, that I'd like it. But I thought his work with Stereolab was like crossing chocolate with garlic aioli - just because you like them both separately doesn't mean they should be combined.

Again, who knows what I'd think if I listened today. Don't have a copy of it, though.

I don't think anyone's denying that! What's being questioned are the results.

if your point is that Stereolab wanted to go in that direction instead of McEntire pushing them, sure, okay. But that doesn't make me like the music any more. They could have recorded the same record with Albini or in their garage or whereever, and I still would have felt the same about DOTS AND LOOPS - namely, that it systematically worked against everything that I had previous enjoyed about Stereolab. If McEntire's name is used more often, perhaps it is because I've noticed the pattern with multiple records - again, if you haven't heard ARCHES AND AISLES by the Spinanes, the contrast between it and STRAND is stark. Again, perhaps R. Gates WANTED to sound like that, but again, it's a less interesting direction to me than the direction that was implied in previous albums.

then again I never heard either tortoise or dots and loops as sounding 'jazzy' so many I just didn't have the same conceptual tools at hand as you.

As for Rebecca Gates, well even though I've not heard that album, based on interactions with her I'd think she would be willing to be "led around by the nosering." Her music is shallow and trite, no matter who's doing the knob-twiddling.

I'll take TRANSIENT RANDOM NOISE BURSTS or MARS AUDIAC QUINTET or the first Tortoise CD or STRAND over DOTS AND LOOPS any day, is what I'm really saying. I disliked DOTS AND LOOPS enough that I haven't listened to a Stereolab record since.

As I said above, it's been six or seven years since I heard DOTS AND LOOPS. And the combination of the changed rhythmic approach and McEntire's presence (plus perhaps other factors that I can't really recall anymore) is how I drew the Tortoise analogy.

All of which is to say that, in principle, I do agree to a certain extent, although I would also say that Stereolab and Tortoise feel closer in unity of purpose than Stereolab and AC/DC, regardless of the rhythmic approach on any Stereolab record. (In other words, you're right that rhythmic approaches alone don't make BACK IN BLACK and TRANSIENT RANDOM any more similar to each other than MILLIONS NOW LIVING and DOTS AND LOOPS are to each other, but there are more aesthetic commonalities between Stereolab of any era and Tortoise of any era than there are between Stereolab of any era and AC/DC of any era.) Unfortunately, until I hear DOTS AND LOOPS again, I can't argue the point any more specifically.

And, to further clarify, I don't mind "jazzy" intrinsically - there's lots of records (jazz ones, for instance) where it's essential and incredible and mind-blowing - it's just anathema to what I liked about Stereolab.

Oh, and hstencil, care to elucidate on that Pixies/Albini reference? Never heard it before.

'Twas a ref. to his article in that one Forced Exposure wherein he reviews records he worked on.

Oh gawd, please, no!

I've not done NEARLY as much cocaine as Tom Arnold. How's that for a hint?

Super-Electric (1)
K-Stars (2)
Les Yper-Sound (6)
Captain Easychord (10)
Our Trinitone Blast (3)
Brakhage (8)
Wow and Flutter (4)
Orgiastic (2)
Fuses (9)
French Disko (5)
OLV 26 (6)
Super Falling Star (2)
Emperor Tomato Ketchup (6)
Les Yper Yper Sound (7)

1. Too Pure: The Peel Sessions
2. Peng!
3. Transient Random Noise Bursts with Announcements
4. Mars Audiac Quintet
5. Refried Ectoplasm: Music for the Amorphous Body Study Center
6. Emperor Tomato Ketchup
7. Noise of Carpet promotional single
8. Dots and Loops
9. Cobra and Phases Group Play Voltage in the Milky Night
10. Sound-Dust

Didn't use:
Switched On Stereolab
Space Age Bachelor Pad Music
Fluorescences single
Aluminum Tunes: Stereolab Sampler
The First of the Microbe Hunters

MISS MODULAR

the answer is so obviously yes

it's funny to me that there's people in this old thread arguing that it was a bad change of direction, but also people arguing that it was the start of them becoming too predictable? i wasn't really aware it was sort of controversial in the same way as cobra & phases group was

"brakhage" is the greatest

All I know is that pre-Dots Stereolab is one of my favourite bands

And Dots onward sounds like this, to me:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTfZshkNZRw

it probably needs a breakbeat at least or something to make the comparison really work

I myself first heard Switched On and Dots And Loops the same week— borrowed them on CD from a friend in dorm in ‘98– the latter sounded like an Austin Powers gag and the former sounded like scripture

Even more disappointing is that Dots came out just a year after the groop was so successfully toeing the line, playing with ii7-I7 breeziness but keeping it effortless, singing the one lyric that I might tattoo on my body if I was the kind of person who wanted tattoos on my body:

Que faire quand on a tout fait
Tout lu, tout bu, tout mangé
Tout donné en vrac et en détail
Quand on a crié sur tous les toits
Pleuré et ri dans les villes et en campagne

(Basically: “what does one do when you’ve done everything, read everything, drunk everything, eaten everything, given everything with truthfulness and attention to detail, shouted it from every roof, cried and laughed both in town and countryside?”)

I’m not mad about it— loads of composers make a left turn and some people follow them where they’re going. But truth be told I’d be more inclined to see a Stereolab tribute act that stops at Emperor Tomato than I would be inclined to see actual Stereolab

Not only their pinnacle but the pinnacle of 90’s albums.

Damn straight!

Dots and Loops is a total classic

You fiends

I had a similar mindset as fgti at the time, worshipped Refried Ectoplasm and Transient Noise Bursts and even Emperor Tomato Ketchup went a bit too far for me - I did NOT want tunes from them, I wanted them to do laser surgery on my skull with that farfisa until I blacked out. Then sometime in the late 2000s the other stuff clicked for me, slowly first then quickly. I'm sure that finally being far-enough removed from the 90s kitsch revival helped in a big way, at the time it was tough for me to hear those records outside the context of lounge-pop novelty stuff that was so pervasive at the time.

I had a very different trajectory. I was unfamiliar with the indie stuff and became a fan when Transient random came out, loved MAQ a little less; thought emperor tomato ketchup was their absolute high point and then I bought dots and loops the day it came out and it just entranced me for months and still haunts me. I just detected evolution not a break.

I think I've posted elsewhere before, it also didnt help that the vinyl pressing of ETK that I owned sounded like absolute muddy dogshit

I was pretty unfamiliar with them when D&L dropped, and it was vv similar to Saint Etienne and how I first heard them via Good Humor, I had a different experience from anyone who was familiar with the earlier work. It just sounded so good to me.

The first one I heard was Emperor Tomato Ketchup, which I liked fine ... but I fell hard for Dots and Loops, which felt like it was on another level and hit a sweet spot in my brain. Then I went back to the earlier stuff, which I ended up liking too, but nothing ever topped D&L in terms of its impact on me. I remember being annoyed at Ned's dismissiveness on this and other threads in the early-to-mid-2000s and ended up writing a defense of the album for Stylus that specifically called him out lol.

you fiend!

I was ride-or-die for Stereolab from “Super-Electric” on, as they began to let the sunlight in on MAQ I loved them even more. ETK was a literal world to me and when Dots dropped it was an ecstatic fulfilment of their promise. I found lots to sustain me after that but Dots was the peak.

I remember being annoyed at Ned's dismissiveness on this and other threads in the early-to-mid-2000s and ended up writing a defense of the album for Stylus that specifically called him out lol.

Except of course I am right. Hooray! (But I kid the etc.)

one of the rare times Ned was wrong!

I don't know whether I said it upthread all that time back but the actual tour appearance for D&L killed. Double one-time combination opener of the High Llamas with the string section as well as Mouse on Mars, plus me turning around while in line to get in at one point and realizing that John C. Reilly, who I'd just seen in Boogie Nights, was right behind me.

Ned and I have nabisco on our side on this one iirc

And to be clear it’s not that I actually dislike latter day Stereolab— I listen to Margerine Eclipse with some regularity and the comeback album got some play too— but it’s such a whole different thing from the early “Neu! 2.0” days

And yeah in the late 90s too there was that horrifying swing revival thing that felt adjacent to the lounge revival— part of why The Strokes and Electroclash hit like a truck was how much of a fresh air it all was

Regarding “Neu! 2.0” my needs just transferred over to Electrelane and I’ve always felt satisfied

There is a subset of people who think that long track on Cobras (what it called? Blue Milk!) is the band’s peak, I think Bradford Cox originated this affectation. It’s fine. When I want to listen to albums that sound like this there’s a lot of bossanova I’d prefer to put on

I do really love the song “Flourescences” tho— too charming to resist. “Girl, are you okay? Do you need a hand?” “I’m ok, let me go, go away, I’m alright…” Love it.

Fluorescences EP is my favourite ever Stereolab release, the version of You Used To Call Me Sadness on there is just incredible

emperor tomato ketchup was the barrier to me really getting into them for ages because it's somehow their most canonised album (though dots & loops seems to be increasing in stature lately) but i've never really liked it that much. even after getting into them it just feels like the awkward transitional point between the intense organ krautrock of their early period and the avant-easy listening of dots & loops, and just not as successful as either (though it has its moments)

Totally get this. ETK was the first one I didn't buy. A lot of it just sounded like a strangely laboured-over and tidy version of what had come before. Though the highs were still were pretty high I didn't really get much mileage out of my tape dub. "Flourescences" and then "Brakhage" indicated that (i) they could at least push their new fussiness into fresh and legitimately beautiful new realms and (ii) I had got off the wagon prematurely.

Completely agreed about ETK being an awkward transitional record. I love it, but it's dwarfed by both what came before and after.

ETK is my favorite non-compilation album of theirs; I think it bridges the kraut and the cocktails well, it feels like the sum of its parts. Percolator is to me a Dots track done right, it adds blorps and smooveness but keeps the kling klang

personally I had a difficult time with Transient Noise Blasts....maybe it was that I got into it right as I was getting into Neu! and Faust and all that so it was real obvious what they were borrowing from. thought the band just wasn't for me but ETK/D&L convinced me, Margerine Eclipse is my favorite so far, also love the new one

Coincidence that these particular albums of contention coincide with the conspicuous Chicago connection? John McEntire, Jim O'Rourke ...

...and Mike Jorgenson (later of Wilco) hovering in the background

well it was a big shift in sound - repetition has always been their core interest but they shifted from drones to loops, and etk is the album in the middle of that transition. i like what mcentire & o'rourke brought to the table on that run of albums from dots & loops to sound-dust a lot, but overall i think their most consistent period was the early motorik period up until mars audiac quintet. dots & loops is still my favourite though

Ooooo god it’s been at least twelve months since I played through The Sea And Cake’s discography— now that’s some drywall-jazz I can get behind

yea I've been revisiting TSAC's stuff a lot over the last few months and digging it more than ever

Prekop is my #1 musician crush

I started with "Transient", well, "Jenny Ondioline" obviously with "French Disco".

Got earlier albums, not so fussed. But Switched on vol 2 might be my all time fav.

Anyway, each new album i always felt like I didn't like them, but would play them again then would come around to them.

Dots & Loops it took hearing it in Oxfam that made me go back and listen properly..

After that? Well, other music was available and I do still have the albums up to "Not Music" but am unsure if I actually got round to playing it...

The groop first showed up for me when "The Noise of Carpet" got pretty heavy play at the Ole Miss campus radio station; I was working at the univ.'s student media center at the time and was getting a dangerously heavy dose of college radio every day. I associate D&L with my 1998-2001 years in Northern California. It blew my mind, to the extent that I refused to investigate their older work for a few years because I knew nothing could live up to D&L, and pointedly refused to give from Cobra & Phases & thereafter a fair shake until I gave the full discography a hard listen when the Stereolab ballot poll was running.

One thing that helped me overdose on D&L was the opening to "Refractions in the Plastic Pulse" being used as bumper music between shows on PBS You, the late 90s-2005 educational channel, which we had on a lot during the Redding years. Anyway, D&L is one of their pinnacles, though I don't listen to it often anymore. Sound-Dust is the one I keep listening to now.

Sea and the Cake was a band I never checked out, probably because the name is goofy. What’s a good place to start?

First three albums (s/t, Nassau, The Biz) are breezy guitar pop, very enjoyable stuff, especially The Biz

Next three (The Fawn, Oui, One Bedroom) are the ones I think people like most - they added some modern electronic elements which gave their sound a new dimension, if you come at them from Stereolab I think Fawn or Oui is the one you want to start with...I mean if you don't love "Afternoon Speaker" then just forget it

the ones after I think are fine, pretty good even, but the band didn't really have a clear direction after that, so my main impression is "that's the Sea and Cake, alright". I still like them all though, they're such a good vibes band, that said I'm kinda glad they went kaputt so Prekop and McEntire could focus on other things...that album they did as a duo with the cats on the cover is fantastic

Oui is my favorite, and the most Dots n Loopsish in its own way

Personally I'd suggest The Fawn and Sam Prekop s/t as your entry point

Also, for nerds, and this is only my recollection, but The Sea And Cake got their name from a misheard Gastr Del Sol song title "The C In Cake"

Realising I'm chronically unfamiliar with "The Groop Played Space Age Bachelor Pad Music" and listened to it this morning. Wow, what a weak release. I remember seeing it on CD in stores in the late 90s and thinking that it seemed unthinkable that I'd pay $22 for an EP at the time and I am so glad I didn't. "We're Not Adult Orientated" is nice. Not at all surprised that none of these tracks were subsequently compiled or made any appearances in Peel Sessions or what have you

aw, I love “Avant Garde M.O.R.”

but yeah the rest is kinda self parody

In 1996 I saw Sonic Youth with Stereolab opening in Berlin and then the next day caught a triple header of Tortoise/Sea and Cake/Trans Am. Peak 90s moment. I like Dots and Loops a lot but prefer the relaxed/fun vibe of ETK.

Live recording from is are intsersting. Alsao in case i have not self promoted this simce 2002... https://www.koly.com/stereolab/bootswitch.php

Thank you fgti, despite listening to it for 30 years I have neither known nor appreciated the lyrics of "Cybèle's Reverie", and now I love it even more.

For me they peaked with "Music for the Amorphous Body Study Center" and I bailed after Cobra but I've warmed to later material over the years. The non-lp stuff has always been where it's at, the EPs and compilation contributions are where they let their freak flag fly.

Go easy on The Groop Played Space Age Batchelor Pad Music. The trippy "We're Not Adult Orientated" video on late night TV was my first exposure to the groop so it's a sacred artefact lol. I guess the title track(s) and the second "WNAO" are inessential but I suspect I've listened to it way more than, say, Lo Fi over the years.

U.H.F.- MFP is a top five all-time Stereolab track and I'd rather hear it twenty times in a row than the entirety of Dots and Loops... musically, lyrically, vocally that one track may be the purest distillation of their sound

I love buzzy, Farfisa-driven Stereolab and was all-in with them from the beginning so unsurprisingly, I was a Dots and Loops skeptic. I was so disappointed when it was released. After the incredible sound of the ETK tour when Sonic Boom was playing with them, DaL felt like a regression into oddball Free Design-inspired exotica that I just couldn't connect with. It put me off of them for a long time until the "Interlok" single came out. I saw them a couple of times after that and IIRC correctly, they didn't play any DaL material on the Chemical Chords tour so maybe they agreed with me too.

Fast-forward to now and the DaL songs they play live now (usually "Miss Modular" along with "The Flower Called Nowhere" or "Rainbo Conversation"). Don't know if that album just fits in better now or my ears have changed.

I never heard Low Fi until recently and I like it! The b-side of Bachelor is OK. My friend pointed out that they were still finding their “not a Neu! cover band” sound and I should be more charitable toward it

I think Bachelor was the first time they worked with Mary Hansen

low fi was the first appearance of both hansen and ramsay

i agree with fgti about space-age batchelor pad music, it's the weakest of their early period. the two versions of "we're not adult oriented" are great but the rest is rather slight

Not at home to check but I think Tim’s notes on the Batchelor reissue mentioned that they went in to record a single and ended up doing more tracks which may be why it doesn’t feel as fully realized.

UHF-MFP is indeed all time, and I want to say the same notes mentioned there was going to be drums added but they didn’t get around to it. Better for the song as the drum machine makes it, esp the last few minutes, hypnotic.

Low-Fi was the crossover phase with Mary and Andy joining for the first time, but Martin Kean (The Chills) still on bass and Mick Conroy (Modern English) still on Farfisa.

Dots and Loops is great but not the pinnacle for me. I loved how they evolved over time with different songwriting processes, different members and collaborators, but the early guitar/farfisa rock band from 91-93 (and up through 96) is what I fell in love with and still is what I reach for. The Neu homages are there but it’s a small percentage of their stuff in that period. Also Peng suffers from some weak production esp on the rockier tracks. They could get loud live on Orgiastic, Peng 33, Stomach Worm, etc.

For me, Cobra and Phases is Dots and Loops done better and is therefore the pinnacle.

cobra and phases is going for something a bit different, it's looser, jazzier, & more chaotic. there's some real highlights ("strobo acceleration"! "the free design"!) but it's also a bit much overall for me

Parts of "Infinity Girl" remind me of Trick of the Tail-era Genesis.

i just got to margerine eclipse in my full discography listen and i feel like people don't talk enough about how brilliant that album is. i certainly haven't spent enough time with it previously

they do some fascinating things with the hard-panned mix but it's also sort of exhausting and disorienting to listen to on headphones because nothing else sounds like it at all

I think I just bumped the Margerine Eclipse thread a week ago after coming to the same conclusion. helps that the first track hooks you in right away...Dots & Loops does that too

I fell off with Cobra, I incorrectly felt they were treading water. A dive into the albums I had ignored a couple years ago convinced me I was wrong.

said it on the other thread but the opening 3 songs on margerine might be peak stereolab for me

can’t believe I slept on Sound-Dust and ME for like 20 years

Space Moth rules

I've owned and enjoyed Cobra for years, but for the life of me I still have trouble reciting the full name of the record.

@ ufo I know Spiritualized have a dual mono album (Pure Phase) and I seem to recall Primal Scream (?) doing a similar thing at one point

i just got to margerine eclipse in my full discography listen and i feel like people don't talk enough about how brilliant that album is. i certainly haven't spent enough time with it previously

― ufo, Tuesday, 31 March 2026 13:11 (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

oi

they made an album just for meeee <3

well, they made it for Mary Hansen and made damn sure it was the most music per minute an album can feasibly have, in her honour. Sound-Dust approaches this level at times and definitely shows that they were heading into new, more intricately poignant territory, but ME is a psychedelic fever-dream nonpareil

you aren't properly listening to the lyrics then, the album is for the people by the people

o7

Just piling on with the ME love, it really is a peak accomplishment.

I think Pure Phase was done a bit differently, where it has 2 different mixes of the same material for the left and right channels, whereas Margerine Eclipse has completely different recordings and musical parts on each channel.

yeah pure phase is the closest thing to margerine eclipse i'm aware of in terms of mixing approach but it's not quite the same thing, the effect isn't as intense

margerine eclipse is kinda the culmination of everything they'd done up to that point, it's all in there. top 3 easily

fab four suture is the first to really feel like they're running out of steam. the main development in their sound is that there's brass everywhere, which is less dramatic than the shifts they made each album over the previous decade, and the songs feel generally unmemorable?

tbf that release compiles a series of 7" singles which were pretty fun in their own right.
Looking at the TV performance from the Kraftwerk thread, it finally dawned on me - 30 years late - that "Metronomic Underground" nicks the bassline from "Autobahn".

is it? i don't really hear a similarity except the octave jumps, which are a pretty common thing for a bassline to do.

i know "klang tone" lifts the bassline from "european son" and slows it down, which yo la tengo then copied for "moby octopad"

True, but when you see the Kraftwerk one played, it's the Metronomic Underground line with an eighth-note echo on it, I think. Anyway I am tired and prone to mistakes like that!

There was some interview where Michael Rother was passing some tents at Glastonbury festival, in the mid distance Stereolab were just starting up, and he was all like "Shit, we're on!"

there's a few interviews where he tells the story of his friend introducing him to stereolab by taking him to a show, which he enjoyed but found it very odd to hear something so clearly influenced by his own work, saying he wondered if he was listening to his own playing

Yeah, i remember that. He didn't mind too much, nice bloke