In Praise of...Stereolab "Emperor Tomato Ketchup"

I am still yet to figure out what I was thinking that day...

I wouldn't swap ANY of my CD's, even the mistakes like Stars: The Best of Dubstar (even that has a coupla corkers, all at the start); together they form a sort of flowchart through my growing musical awareness.

xpost

Is there a Blue Jam thread on ILE btw? May check...

(cheers for the memory jog, fandango, I'm too lazy to use google)

In praise of this thread for making me dust off "Simple Headphone Mind"!!

I have about 15 of their albums for some reason and cannot name one track off them.
I always gave stereolab too mucxh leeway.
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I thought it was cool to like them. It was largely a waste of time and I lost out again by being a wanker

History has been, and will be kind to "Sound Dust"

Not sure if I have dots and loops. I probably have. I will dig it out and if it's rubbish you can have it.

Best Stereolab experience was seeing them supporting yo La Tengo at leadmill in , I dunno ,95.

I also saw them in Detroit. no, honest i did! Mecca Normal at some coffee house during the day then SL in the eve.

Saddened by the untimely death as blase as I might appear about the grooooop.

sO, who else is from Hull?

p.s. me & noodle_vague was at Lightning Bolt

weakest diss ever(nobody bothers learning their titles dude)

last in Adelphi for Rocky Nest though missed their last one with the Buggerboyz; lost my mobile in Queens a few weeks ago. small world and all that stuff.

Exactly! Their titles are v great, and I remember quite a few of them for that reason, but have minimal clue as to which title belongs to which song. Les Yper-Sound!

this is true.

but i love emperor tomato ketchup as well.

and yeah, i can barely remember any track titles, but "Noise Of Carpet" is awesome and I know there are other good ones near the end.

Yeah, this is OTM. Stereolab records started getting wimpier after "MAQ" -- they became obsessed with sounding digital and quirky, but their live shows remained powerful. The "Sound Dust" tracks sounded 100X better live, which makes me wonder how good that album could have been if Stereolab hadn't forgotten how to be funky in the studio sometime in 1997.

Not that it wasn't a wonderful choice...

01. Aluminum Tunes: Switched On, Vol. 3
02. Mars Audiac Quintet
03. Refried Ectoplasm: Switched On, Vol. 2
04. ABC Music: The Radio 1 Sessions
05. Peng!
06. Switched On
07. Emperor Tomato Ketchup
08. Margerine Eclipse
09. Transient Random-Noise Bursts With Announcements
10. Fab Four Suture
11. Dots and Loops
12. Sound-Dust

Shh, you're giving it away!

On their set lists they use alternate titles. I think the alternate title for "Emperor Tomato Ketchup" is "Ono".

Hey, s1okli said: "they also nicked gil scott-heron for metronomic underground"; what song are you referring to? I know they did plunder at least a couple songs and I would be interested to know which ones they were. I am positive that Ping Pong is lifted from an older song, but with a new melody and lyrics on top for the vocals. Unfortunately I don't know the name of the song that it's based on so maybe someone can help me out there.

When I was at Oberlin College, John Mcentire came back to visit and gave a tape to the guys at the record store. Actually, Todd Hutlock who writes for Stylus. It contained the 2nd Tortoise album and the as yet to be released Emperor Tomato Ketchup, though I think maybe just the songs McEntire produced? All I remember is that the songs didn't have names yet and they were just named after a primary influence of that song. All I remember is "glass pop" "ono pop" "reich pop" and "barry pop". Lost the tape years ago though.

For instance, I think Tomorrow is Already Here was "Reich Pop" due to the steady maraca pulse, the organ part, the vibraphone/marimba playing near the end, all of which bare superficial simularities to Reich.

Reichabilly!

i think 'metronomic underground' is still the best thing they ever did.

I prefer dots and loops, but this album is pretty much perfect as well

"metronomic undeground" is indeed awesome.. also "les yper sound," "cybelle's reverie," "percolator," "motoroller scalatron"...

Love it. There's all kinds of details to get into on each song. "OLV 26" blew my mind at the time.

i think 'metronomic underground' is still the best thing they ever did.

The version on ABC Music is freaking terrific (and I like it better than the ETK version)

Of those on ETK not mentioned so far, The Noise Of Carpet is also awesome with its riff and its wiggly noises.

I thought it'd be a nice ide to add a still from "Tomato Kecchappu Kôtei" which was the source of this title.

Do not do this, it is not safe for work screens...

That movie is weird and disturbing. They showed it at YBCA in SF a year or two ago.

This is the only Stereolab I own, and I've only had it a year or 18 months or so. I like it, quite a lot, and everytime I put it on my initial reaction is "wow, I must get more Stereolab"; by 4 tracks in I'm always thinking "nah, one's enough". Am I right?

No. Their records around that period are all quite different from one another, actually. And if you go back to the beginning, it's a whole other thing entirely.

i've got maybe 14 stereolab lps and cds so i would say "no". maybe get mars audiac quintet next?

What would you recommend, nabisco? i trust your judgement.

Depends which direction you want to go, really.

- Going forward to Dots and Loops gives you something very clean and precise and pop-electronic -- Mouse on Mars contribute to it, and there's a lot of skittery faux-samba stuff. The songwriting is probably closer to Emperor Tomato Ketchup here than on the earlier stuff.

- A hop backward can take you either to Mars Audiac Quintet, which is their outer-spaciest record (long, very pretty, Neu-style drones with good melody, in kind of a bouncing-slowly-around-the-surface-of-the-moon way; you start this and it's just that big repetitive pulse going forever), or to Transient Random Noise Bursts with Announcements, which is kind of their "heaviest" record (more lurching and jolts and disruptive grotty noises, and more like the sinister side of Krautrock; I hesitate to call it more "experimental," but it has more of that feel of trying things in a dark basement).

I'd say those three and Emperor Tomato Ketchup are kind of the high young period of their career; any of them would be great picks, depending on what side of the band you're most interested in hearing.

(I'd also recommend the early, jangly, whooshy Stereolab sound on stuff like Switched On v.1 and Peng!; it's charming in a much simpler, almost indie-poppy way.)

(Also, if you don't think you're going to start buying across Stereolab's whole career path, you can just get Oscillons from the Anti-Sun, which collects all the EPs from across the career -- it's heavier on later stuff, but it's a top-quality way of seeing most everything at once.)

my pre-ETK pick is The Groop Played Space-Age Bachelor Pad Music, which is technically an EP, but hits the sweet spot more in 30 minutes than many bands do in a career...it's where they first hit upon the "Avant-Garde MOR" formula which defines them to this day...gorgeous...

Transient is good for the early stuff. D&L is a great transitional work, and Margerine Eclipse is the best of the new style.

And yeah, Oscillons for a nicely representative spread, although it does meander quite a bit.

When I was at Oberlin College, John Mcentire came back to visit and gave a tape to the guys at the record store. Actually, Todd Hutlock who writes for Stylus. It contained the 2nd Tortoise album and the as yet to be released Emperor Tomato Ketchup, though I think maybe just the songs McEntire produced? All I remember is that the songs didn't have names yet and they were just named after a primary influence of that song. All I remember is "glass pop" "ono pop" "reich pop" and "barry pop". Lost the tape years ago though.

For instance, I think Tomorrow is Already Here was "Reich Pop" due to the steady maraca pulse, the organ part, the vibraphone/marimba playing near the end, all of which bare superficial simularities to Reich.

― Dan Selzer (Dan Selzer), Thursday, August 10, 2006 1:15 PM (4 years ago)

Pretty sure "OLV 26" would be "Suicide Pop" on that list.

Checked this album out of the library recently after hearing the band hyped up so much on ilm. It just sounded like I dunno, a particularly NPR-friendly Medeski, Martin, & Wood or something.

this record is so beautiful

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EPxMKJ-BtHU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6XmGrmRhQsI

sorry

came across this one by chance. very nice, and pretty stereolab-y in places. John Parish produces.

https://lesdisquesbongojoe.bandcamp.com/album/sauvage-formes

<3 the all-too-brief Dubstar tangent.