mars audiac quintet - stereolab

so many great songs, but Transona Five, man...what a song

fantastic album!

tough call b/w Wow & Flutter, Nihilist Assault Group & Outer Accelerator

yeah, I'd put Transona Five in that group too, actually.

from your favorite songs i'd say: Nihilist>Outer>>>Wow

this is one of those polls where, for me at least, it is exceptionally hard to choose b/c the album itself is such a marvel of consistency.

agreed, except that i never listen to the last 2 tracks

"Three-Dee Melodie" – 5:02
"Transona Five" – 5:32
"Three Longers Later" – 3:28
"Nihilist Assault Group" – 6:55
"International Colouring Contest" – 3:47
"Transporté Sans Bouger" – 4:20
"Outer Accelerator" – 5:21

aka as the best songs on the album imo

will i be the only one to vote for des etoiles electroniques? i bet!

the otherwise unreleased long version of New Orthophony is amazing, tho

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=808qJizotKA

likewise this extended version of Nihilist Assault Group from the Wow & Flutter EP

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pmsgYHYdhF0

I had a bonus disc with my one which had a couple of extra tracks - there was a good one which went something like 'ma goal des goals' (except obviously not 'goal', but my primitive French lets me down). Will see if I can track it down....

Klang Tone and Ulan Bator

Klang Tone, apparently. (xp - ok you beat me to it)

I thought it was "Michael Diggle", but hey

The A+ odds & ends Stereolab were prolifically dispersing at this point in their career = the main reason Aluminum Tunes is the standout of the Switched On comps

Thanks for posting those youtubes, pillbox, I've never heard those versions before. For years (until the internet put me out of my misery) I thought she was singing "the two eggs are mine..."

oh man.

"International colouring contest".

First album from the Groop I bought. Perfect mid-point between their two "eras", imo.

somewhere I have a comp I put together of all their random material that didn't make its way to the Switched On comps. If I can find it, I'll make a Spotify playlist & post itt.

I'm really tempted to vote for "Fiery yellow", but I'll have to go back to the album anyway just to make sure. This was a regular soundtrack to mowing the lawn for one year for me.

MAQ was my first Stereolab album and so incredibly important to me both as an album and as a gateway to other things. So hard to choose a track.

will i be the only one to vote for des etoiles electroniques? i bet!

I dunno, it's definitely on my (very long) shortlist. I remember it being my favourite for a time.

Perfect mid-point between their two "eras", imo.

totally agree. if you trace the progression from MAQ to the subsequent related EPs (esp Ping Pong) to French Disko to 'music for the amorphous body center' or whatev & stylistically you end up right at Emperor Tomato Ketchup, which is not nearly the dramatic reconstitution it's often credited as being.

This is pretty much impossible.

the first "era" was pretty short.
xpost

yeah, esp when you consider how transformative Transient Random-Noise Bursts with Announcements & related misc. was as well

MAQ is easily my go-to Stereolab RAWK album, tho - even moreso than Peng

will i be the only one to vote for des etoiles electroniques? i bet!

Not if I can help it!

"Transporté Sans Bouger", love this song so much

three dee

somewhere I have a comp I put together of all their random material that didn't make its way to the Switched On comps.

I did that, too - there's gobs and gobs of uncollected material, most of it great. A chunk of it is on the singles box but we could use another Switched On.

I like most stereolab but don't know the last few as well. The trilogy of transient random, mars audial and emperor tomato is pretty faultless. 3 perfect albums that sound different. Lately I've been goin back to mars audiac quintet as my fave.

Wow, I didn't realize how far off on my own island I am because I thought "Ping Pong" would walk off with this!

It's the hit, sure, but hey

i've seen the groop a bunch of times @ various points in their career, & it was while touring for this album that they hit their live peak imo.

gotta be Transona 5 for me

Love the whole album, but as I'm a pop tart I'm gonna vote Ping Pong. I love the irony of the Marxist analysis over the jolly tune, and the analysis has been pretty otm since 2008

their best record

Transona Five is pretty amazing how it takes the Canne Heat template and puts these beautiful repetitious melodies on top.

This is a really hard choice, but my gut is telling me to go with Nihilist Assault Group today. On another day it could easily be Three-Dee Melodie, Ping Pong, or International Colouring Contest among others.

repetitious yes, but with key changes and different lead vocals
xpost

MAQ holds an odd place in Stereolab's catalog for me. My first taste of it came when the Ping Pong single was released. I was wowed with how clear and professional it sounded compared to their previous releases and with how sharp the lyrics were. Once the full album was released, I felt a bit let down because it is on such an even keel throughout, with very little of the noisier, experimental sections that were all over Transient Random Noise Bursts. Instead, MAQ is a very subtle record where they seem to be fully embracing the Neu! based sound that they had explored on pretty much all their previous albums. It was as if they were saying "This is the Stereolab sound taken to it's natural conclusion."

If that was as far as they'd taken it, I would have been pretty disappointed, so ETK came as a huge relief to me because it showed that they were willing to go in new directions. In retrospect, MAQ is the final chapter in the first phase of Stereolab's career and marks the point where they perfected their original sound.

nice post Moodles.

Yeah. Been thinking about this. To me, Transient is the logical conclusion of the first phase of Stereolab, where even with the droning combo organs and gurgling moogs, the guitar takes center place. Transient is noisier and more expansive and more experimental than most of what came before, just more extreme. With MAQ, they keep the Neu! groove, but production-wise, get slicker, without being overly glossy. Some of those other pop influences, the lounge stuff etc come out more. The velvets guitar is still there, it's just not drowning everything else out. I think ETK is a masterpiece, but by then they're pushing further into non-rock influences. John Barry, minimalism, tropicalia etc. I think it's a great mix of things on ETK, but everything that came after, I don't know, just never did it for me. May just be a timing thing where I just stopped paying attention, and now that I go back and try to revisit it it doesn't stick because it's like a secondary thing, but sonically, it was just different. It's interesting and they're good at it, but it doesn't have that drive, the grit of the early stuff. It just sounds pleasant, even when it was more experimental. Just too developed or produced or something.

Yeah, I had the same falling off at the same point.

Although I liked "Dots and Loops" much more, on a recent play.

I remember at the time getting the feeling that they started following certain trends/influences too much. Certainly John Mcentire added a quality in his production, but it just fleshed out and expanded their palette and sound. But Dots and Loops, it suddenly sounded like they were getting on some kind of new electronica bandwagon. And I like Mouse on Mars, but I remember not liking Dots and Loops much. I bought the one after that and only listened to it a few times, I think it was Cobra, with Jim O'Rourke? It just seemed like the were working with all these different people and changing their sound in different ways that just didn't interest me, or they lost those key influences that maybe they thought they had beaten to death. Looking back now and revisiting a lot of what they did that I didn't follow at the time, much of it doesn't sound much different than the earlier stuff, but I just don't find it as catchy or fresh sounding, maybe it wasn't. Or maybe I had just moved onto different things.

In any case that's about when Broadcast became the most interesting band in the world, and I don't think that's a coincidence. Maybe it's a songwriting thing, or maybe Broadcast was just drawing on fresher (or more obscure) sources.

I never cared much for Dots and Loops until last year. It needed 15 years to marinate in my brain i guess.

http://s3.postimage.org/f054frt7n/KGr_Hq_R_lw_E652_YNw_ZJBOv_C_Git_OQ_60_3.jpg

did anyone else snag one of their MAQ-era tour shirts at the time? It had a puffy, sparkly decal, like t-shirts from the late-70s & yellow element of the synth console/keyboard glowed in the dark! Srsly maybe my favorite band tee from back in the days when I used to spend a lot of money on band tees at shows instead of overpriced booze.

the sparks makes it unwearable lol

I love how the album cover looks like a synth with a big toothy grin.

nonsense!

xp

for synth nerds, that's an E-Mu modular system. I remember being really confused at first because they're really rare and I didn't know what they looked like, but I knew it wasn't a Moog, Arp or Buchla.

http://www.vintagesynth.com/emu/emu_modular.php

The answer is "Anamorphose"

thought i was gonna be its only voter

I wish the full version of "New orthophony" which was on "Aluminium Tones" was on this album - oddly enough I've never thought of substituting it before. Just played the album in full, it really is very consistent - a mix of their best elements, both pop and rock and experimental and lounge all at the height of their powers. Still think I'll vote for "Fiery yellow" because I find it kind of spooky.

I actually just played this album last week for the first time in a couple of years. Still sounds fantastic.

Actually, the main reason I put it on was because I was trying to figure out exactly which Stereolab song MBV's "Is This and Yes" reminded me of. "Three Longers Later" (the first half, at least) might come closest, although the intro of "Prisoner of Mars" (from Dots and Loops) also had some resonance.

I was just about to post that, except I think it's Des Etoiles Electroniques that it reminds me of.

struggled with this for days (tussle mainly b/n wow & l'enfer des formes), but went with new orthophony in the end, purely for the atmosphere it creates. I may be allowing the longer aluminium tunes version to distort my view of the song but wot eva.

I mean basically everything that isn't tuneless stoner-droner was on my short list

"struggled with this for days"

sorry!

"I actually just played this album last week for the first time in a couple of years. Still sounds fantastic."

you welcome!

my most played Stereolab. voted "Transona Five"

who else could make "we can't avoid dying" sound so beautiful?

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

OK, I've narrowed it down to a choice between:
Three-Dee Melodie
Ping Pong
New Orthophony
International Colouring Contest

i'll narrow it down for you even more:

Three Dee Melodie

It's a good one, but so are the others. Gah!

Still haven't voted on this... really hard poll imho.

The answer is "Anamorphose"

thought i was gonna be its only voter

― mookieproof, Wednesday, February 13, 2013 9:33 AM (3 days ago)

Current status: In the midst of a rescreen, and I just remember them slaying this song live with Sonic Boom sitting in with the group smoking a big spliff and the band just locked in this incredible groove, such an unreal magical moment... incredibly loud but delicate, so layered, love these guys so much. Miss Mary... RIP.

Although Nihilist Assault Group is giving it a bit of a run at the moment. #ratherdullliveblog

"Still haven't voted on this... really hard poll imho."

hurry up!

http://www.motivatorscompanyblog.com/image.axd?picture=2012%2F11%2Feveryvotecounts.jpg

YES WE CAN

the ability of Stereolab to compose melody for their unmelodic political lyrica is underrated and amazing

for example:

Hideous on the edge of a precipice
The cavity filled up with forgetfullness
Beyond there's no retribution only war
Her society overtly
The meaning of existence
Can't be supplied by religion or ideologies
Left to all our creativity we must find
The real significance that wouldn't be mystified
The sense or non-sense that will emerge on a precipice
Is only the impact of the creative activity

only Stereolab are able to do that!

Transporte Sans Bouger is kind of slept on, nice little uptempo shoofly beat with a cool Eno outro.

#dullliveblogcontinued

Easily googlable question, is this the last O'Hagan LP? #lazyliveblog

"Need to

ex-a-mine

uncritical times"

Easily googlable question, is this the last O'Hagan LP? #lazyliveblog

― Jersey Al (Albert R. Broccoli), Saturday, February 16, 2013 3:12 PM (11 minutes ago)

#answeringmyownquestionwithoutgoogling

oh yes, "Fiery Yellow"... this is some obscure Beach Boys' Friends out take or something, only O'Hagan could come up with this.

Tempted to vote "Fiery Yellow" for some B-grade challops but I think I will do the right thing and go with "Anamorphose". Sick track bro.

instant o in the universe was the first post-hagan release iirc, margerine eclipse the first full album (she was on sound-dust)

International Colouring Contest should get cred for being based on a true story.

If you guys are talking about Sean O'Hagan, I think he was only listed as a band member on TRNBWA, but has performed or provided arrangements on all of their releases since then.

The meaning of existence
Can't be supplied by religion or ideologies

That makes sense. Oh, for access to the internet and lyrics websites in 1994. For years I wasn't sure if it was "The meaning of existence can be supplied by limiting our ideology" or "...by living in our ideology". And all along it was neither. I'm not sure if this is better or worse than "the two eggs are mine, uncritical times".

I always though it was "the meaning of existence can be supplied by living and not by theology"

though i guess Stereolab did supply at least some of their meaning with ideology

the vocal melody in the 2nd half of Three Longers Later sounds a lot like Three Wishes by the TV Personalities, always wondered if this was intentional

Probably so since almost every element in every song they've done can be tied back to some other recording

results make sense

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

not surprised some nonsense drone tied in equal first on ilx

ping pong is impossible to disagree with though

"ot surprised some nonsense drone"

CRAZY TALK

and yet l'enfer des formes got no votes

horrific

my dn was meant to be cat anuses but now it is just tears

Really wish Sloan's fake-live medley of "On The Road Again"/"Transona Five" was on YouTube.

haha, yeah that is great -- the one that's sort of a fake party CD? i remember that well, though i haven't heard it in ... a dozen years?

RIP Three Longers Later, I nearly voted for you

if Fiery Yellow's 2 votes were shared between the two no-voters, I'd much happier with the results

Three Longers Later deserved votes, the moment when the full band kicks in is one of the best parts of the album (and the groop discog at large)

As much as I love MAQ, the recent re-appraisal of it as their best record is more than a little mystifying.

Are the votes for “Fiery Yellow” joke votes?

If you guys are talking about Sean O'Hagan, I think he was only listed as a band member on TRNBWA, but has performed or provided arrangements on all of their releases since then.

I thought he was a full band member until Emperor Tomato Ketchup. He even gets the songwriting credit for “Percolator.”

Only ones that had him listed as a band member are TRNBWA and Space-Age Bachelor Pad.

In any case, it's interesting to see MAQ considered a favorite. I never really considered it mine, but if I had to think back to which Stereolab album I've returned to most over the years, it's probably MAQ. "Nihilist Assault Group" always seals the deal for me. Such a powerful song.

Definitely my favorite track on MAQ too. It baffles me that Tim hates it so much. Maybe it's because they tried so many different versions and only ended up using a couple parts.

The reissue gives me newfound respect for "Transporté Sans Bouger". Probably their most complex melody at that point. Makes me wonder if Laetitia had more of a hand in it, as it doesn't sound like any of the other stuff Tim was coming up with at the time

Fiery Yellow won’t leave my head. It’s driving me nuts.