T/S: Transient Random-Noise Bursts With Announcements vs. Emperor Tomato Ketchup

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I prefer Transient and have always felt ETK was great but overpraised. For all the latter's apparent development, I can't help but feel that none of their work stands up to the raw power of the debut. I'm sure I'll be noisily disagreed with on this point, but the post-Transient stuff just seems like occassionally successful expansions on the sound they perfected the first time around. Perhaps I'm unfairly singling out ETK, but given that it's largely considered the apex of their development it seemed as good a target as any for a T/S.

― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Sunday, 25 March 2007 06:03 (eighteen years ago)

actually, that's pretty otm

― gershy, Sunday, 25 March 2007 07:45 (eighteen years ago)

Which album do you consider their debut?

― f. hazel, Sunday, 25 March 2007 07:52 (eighteen years ago)

Yeah, actually, "PENG!" was their debut album.

I agree with you though. TRNBWA is a far superior record on the basis of its sonic density. I think people feel like ETK is better because it's when Stereolab moved beyond what people perceived as a NEU! cover band. However, I think that apart from Jenny Ondioline, there aren't many tracks that sound like NEU!. In fact, TRNBWA was kind of a shock when it came out (to me anyways) because it didn't sound like their earlier stuff and doesn't really sound like anything else in their discography.

I would argue there's a certain amount of C-86 tweeness left over from McCarthy in their earlier records that comes off with the silly Moog sounds, etc. When they cut TRNBWA though, it seems like they decided, "Ok, we're going to take these earlier ideas and make them into serious statement about how we want to meld pop and avant-garde." It does sound serious, but not in a self-righteous or irritating manner and more importantly it works.

ETK is a return to the sort of goofball antics that they had in earlier records and is a lot less interesting for that reason. Plus, TRNBWA is way catchier and has better songs. They manage to make a fake bossa-nova track with samples from Perrey/Kingsley and some other tape music source with lyrics straight out of Bataille and not sound like assholes; that's kind of a feat. Plus. the riff on Crest is killer.

― William Selman, Sunday, 25 March 2007 15:14 (eighteen years ago)

I bought TRNBWA once but it was scratched so you couldn't hear the last two tracks :-(

After copying the other songs to my PC I took the disc back. Now I don't own any Stereolab CDs. And the last two tracks on that album, which I've subsequently heard, are two of the best songs on the entire record. Woe!

― unfished business, Sunday, 25 March 2007 15:19 (eighteen years ago)

damn does taking sides here preclude discussion of Mars Audiac Quintet? That's my favourite by a mile.

between the two, I prefer TRNBWA. Strangely, though, my copy is (and always has been) scratched in the same way LJ describes - wonder if there was a bad batch at the CD plant??

― tom, Sunday, 25 March 2007 15:31 (eighteen years ago)

i had a bad vinyl copy of one of those double album singles comps on coloured vinyl. it was a little wobbly and fucked up. er, stereolab singles comps. maybe they had a bad commie record presser.

transient...has always been my fave. saw them at that time at the danbury airport bar in danbury connecticut AND TIME AND SPACE STOOD STILL BEFORE THEIR VERY AWESOMENESS. seriously, one of the best shows i've ever seen. tomato ketchup is good to though. very kool soundz. then i lost track.

― scott seward, Sunday, 25 March 2007 15:41 (eighteen years ago)

ETK is one of my least favorite Stereolab albums, and I have NEVER, EVER understood the praise its gotten, no matter how hard I've tried.

― Reatards Unite, Sunday, 25 March 2007 15:48 (eighteen years ago)

transient...has always been my fave. saw them at that time at the danbury airport bar in danbury connecticut

First time I saw them was that tour as well, with Unrest and Idaho (quite a combination, really). They were excellent but almost a touch monochromatic; later tours hit me harder. This said I eternally regret missing the ETK tour with Sonic Boom joining them onstage and Prolapse opening. What the hell was I thinking?

― Ned Raggett, Sunday, 25 March 2007 16:01 (eighteen years ago)

id take ETK over TRNBWA. i find trnbwa weirdly produced and a bit incoherent (i also find mars audiac quintet a bit oddly produced)

i agree that etk is kind of the culmination of stereolab mark i (though really i think this carries on and includes Fluouresences as well), before dots and loops marked a change in direciton i couldnt get with

but really id probably take space age bachelor pad music, or music for the amorphous body study centre first, both have a lighter softer touch

― 600, Sunday, 25 March 2007 16:03 (eighteen years ago)

Definitely TRNBWA. That seemed to be culmination of the guitar/organ driven stuff. By ETK, they'd opened the floodgates to more non-4/4 stuff, horns, more drum machines, more jazz/world-music-inspired stuff... decidedly less rock. I do enjoy both sides of the band, but I'd not heard the neu/can/etc stuff prior to Stereolab so that minimal rocking was a revelation. Also, they were very noisy on this record (= good thing!), more than they ever consistently were again.

And, agreed, it was a bit of shock when it came out following Space-Age Bachelor and Low-Fi. In hindsight its easy to just lump it in with the pre-1995 stuff, but at the time it felt like a big leap. I remember barely tuning in WPRB in the summer of 1994 and hearing them play "Golden Ball" from the advance Jenny Ondioline 7" that Elektra sent out -- I nearly crashed the car.

i find trnbwa weirdly produced
Yeah, it doesn't take away my love of it, but parts of the record do sound as though it were mastered off a tv broadcast / vhs tape. It makes it sound all the more otherworldly.

― city worker, Sunday, 25 March 2007 16:26 (eighteen years ago)

I'll take the first volume of Switched over anything that came after.

― Alex in SF, Sunday, 25 March 2007 16:41 (eighteen years ago)

summer of 1994

...err, 1993 I meant. I think the ep and album were out before I was back at college in September.

― city worker, Sunday, 25 March 2007 17:03 (eighteen years ago)

Peng! and Switched On are my favorite Stereolab albums, though probably just for sentimental reasons. They introduced me to the band, and I fell in love with them instantly. All my favorite things on display in perfect form: fondness for heavy "rock" noise, swirly textural depth, and a delicate loveliness they'd never surpass ("K-Stars").

After that, and so close behind it's almost impossible to separate them from the the first two, come Refried Ectoplasm (Switched On Volume 2) and Emperor Tomato Ketchup. I can see why ETK is so beloved of so many: they never wrote a stronger batch of tunes, hooks all over the place, incredibly varied sound palette, successful experimentalism and boundary-pushing within the basic format, dreamy bliss from start to finish, super shiny pop production, etc. It's a honest-to-god mainstream pop record, and it's the only Stereolab album you can say that about. Their other records merely reference pop. I'm kinda tired of ETK, and that's the only reason I don't rank it as my #1 personal favorite. Most days I prefer Refried Ectoplasm. The songs are just as good, but there's more texture, more weirdness ("Animal or Vegetable"), more energy.

Transient Random-Noise Bursts with Anouncements and Mars Audiac Quintet tie for third, along with The Groop Played "Space-Age Bachelor Pad Music". All have wonderful songs, but all feel like they're treading water from time to time. MAQ is definitley the strongest of them, but my personal fondness shifts around depending on my mood. Agree that there's something opaque and off-putting about the production of Transiet Random-Noise that keeps me at a distance. If it were recorded differently, I might rate it higher.

― Pye Poudre, Sunday, 25 March 2007 20:04 (eighteen years ago)

Another vote for Switched On volume 1. Rally loved ETK when it came out, but there's something very primal about the 1st couple CDs that resists aging.

― dlp9001, Sunday, 25 March 2007 22:24 (eighteen years ago)

ETK is more polished i guess, but it will always be my favorite

still, no denying the greatness of TRNBWA.

― latebloomer, Sunday, 25 March 2007 23:06 (eighteen years ago)

I have to go with ETK.

TRNBWA was the first album I heard from them and it completely blew my mind. I quickly bought everything they had made up to that point. Peng! quickly became a favorite along with TRNBWA. When MAQ came out, I liked it, but felt like it lacked the exciting experimentation of their previous albums. I also felt like they were getting into a rut at that point. MAQ was the definitive statement of that particular Neu! sound that they had been flogging for several years. It didn't seem like there was much left for them to do after that.

I saw them play live for the first time on the MAQ tour. It was fun, but they seemed pretty nervous and tentative. Enjoyable in places, but nothing really amazing. At that point they were my favorite band, but I thought that they were maybe running out of ideas.

So when ETK came out, it was a complete shock because it was so different from everything they had done before. The first bunch of tracks are complete classics as are a bunch of others. Production-wise, it's the best they've sounded. I don't think anything they've done since has been quite as good in terms of sound quality, though plenty of it has been strong.

Then I saw them on the ETK tour and it was one of the best concerts I have ever seen. The sounds they produced live were so far and beyond anything that I had witnessed before that it made their previous stuff seem like amateur hour.

So yes, even though TRNBWA is a classic album, for me, ETK is just a wee bit better. At this point though, Sound-Dust is probably my favorite of theirs, but that is another story....

― Moodles, Sunday, 25 March 2007 23:10 (eighteen years ago)

Actually, I nearly boughy ETK from the Berwick Street MVE last week, but I noticed a corruption on the CD. What is it with Stereolab and faulty CDs? >:-(

― unfished business, Sunday, 25 March 2007 23:13 (eighteen years ago)

i've never really been too big on transient - "jenny" is obvs. a total classic but i find the rest uncompelling. love peng! though, and rank it and etk as my favorites.

― pretzel walrus, Monday, 26 March 2007 04:20 (eighteen years ago)

Switched On

I remember hearing this in The Record Collector, instantly falling in love with it, and running to the counter to find out what it was. Apparently, I missed their first Detroit show by about a week. This is really the only thing they ever did that inspired love. Everything else was very clever and worthy of respect, but I never *loved* any of their released like this one. This record meant a lot to me at the time. 15 years later(has it been that long), I throw it in every couple years or so and listen to High Expectation a couple times.

― Display Name, Monday, 26 March 2007 04:45 (eighteen years ago)

switched ons 1 & 2 both kinda rule the school.

i'll always have a real love-on for ETK though. i have memories of going to summer school the year it came out and coming home every day at like noon to take a bath and listen to that album. a weird, fun period in my life i'll always associate with that album.

― s1ocki, Monday, 26 March 2007 05:31 (eighteen years ago)

I'll take the first volume of Switched over anything that came after.

i agree with this, although i have a lot of time for refried ectoplasm too.

of the proper albums, mars audiac is #1, followed by transient.

ETK has not aged well for me.

― electricsound, Monday, 26 March 2007 08:19 (eighteen years ago)

<3 TRNBWA

― mookieproof, Monday, 26 March 2007 22:24 (eighteen years ago)

transient for me

― stephen, Tuesday, 27 March 2007 01:37 (eighteen years ago)

ETK just stands up better as an album than TRNBWA, despite the class of Jenny, Crest and Romantic Mind. But it's true to say that I don't have the love for ETQ that I did back in '96. It sounded so fresh then after the earlier albums, and it was exciting because, after French Disko and Ping Pong had received daytime Radio One play, it briefly seemed possible that the 'lab might 'break through' to a wider audience. With a single called 'Noise of Carpet'! Metronomic Underground still gets played in 'indie' nights locally,and still sounds amazing. But to say they peaked here isn't fair. It may have been their commercial peak, but later albums like Sound Dust and Margerine Eclipse are full of quality.

But if I had to choose one album, it would still be Mars Audiac Quintet.

― Toucan3000, Tuesday, 27 March 2007 17:03 (eighteen years ago)

TRNBWA (nice acronym) was the first of their albums that I heard, and I was immediately smitten with it. Pleasant thoughts of many lazy afternoons on school breaks listening to "Pack Yr Romantic Mind" and so forth. ETK didn't quite grab me in the same way. Although I could hear the progression in it and the expansion of their sound, which I respected, it didn't dislodge my emotional bond with TRNBWA, even despite my sneaking suspicion that TRNBWA was a bit derivative. I haven't listened to either in some while, so I really couldn't say today which I'd like better.

― o. nate, Wednesday, 28 March 2007 01:20 (eighteen years ago)

ETK was really good, but it did feel like they were starting to tread water a little after the majorness of the two albums before it.

― Tim Ellison, Wednesday, 28 March 2007 01:23 (eighteen years ago)

ETK FTW. people here are criticizing it for being goofy, but i think thats partly the point. etk had the most overtly angry and political lyrics, yet musically it was the most goofy and even sarcastic album they ever made. this contradiction culminates beautifully in the title.

― davie, Thursday, 29 March 2007 02:07 (eighteen years ago)

I prefer Transient and have always felt ETK was great but overpraised

I always felt Transient was great but overpraised. My first Stereolab album was MAQ, which I discovered a little before the release of ETK and became well and truly obsessed with. At that point TRNBWA was the standard fans' pick, so I expected really great things and was underwhelmed. ETK I loved a lot at the time but don't really listen to any more.

I still love MAQ to bits and would choose it as my favourite non-compilation album, but if we're picking favourite Stereolab it has to be the first two Switched Ons. I mean the first is proper rocking propulsive who-needs-chord-changes-anyway era groop from start to finish, and Refried Ectoplasm gives you the best bit of the best track on Transient in Exploding Head Movie, about half my favourite more songy Lab tracks, and 12 minutes of beautiful head-addling weirdness with NWW.

(Never found the production on MAQ weird, but I do find the production on Peng a little disappointing - I want to like it more and the title track is just such an amazing song but it never quite kicks in like I want it to. Maybe I'm just too used to modern overcompressed loudness or something.)

― a passing spacecadet, Thursday, 29 March 2007 03:00 (eighteen years ago)

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