Stereolab side projects, solo joints and one-offs

i've only listened to a handful of these (turn on, schema, monade, laetitia's the trip). what else is it worth investigating?

Simple Headphone Mind and Uilab are both great... SHM is long strange grooviness, Uilab is luminous cover versions of the Eno song

How is the solo Mary stuff and Schema? I never even knew about it.

Either A Few Steps More and Trinity Neon for me

Had no idea there was a Mary Hansen album

guess it is more of an e.p. of unreleased material

schema is p good iirc though i haven't heard it in full

UIlab bothered me, it just seemed so... caucasian? (Can I say that here?)

This is a very good jam that is essentially Stereolab packaged under another name:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V13n2Tm_vss

Not sure if I liked the rest of the album, sorta seemed like tracking demos or half-finished tracks.

sorta funny to think of snowpony as a stereolab side proj when gifford was around for such a relatively short time..

schema rules. it is basically a hovercraft spin-off (kraut/space rock action with plenty of repetition and mountains of guitar effects) only with mary oozing and cooing on top. super fun stuff.

great jam, my fave from the album

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8f3C7ExvrIA

Simple! Headphone! Miiiiiiiiiiiind!

Mainly bcz I think of Snowpony as something *more* than just "Stereolab side project"

Europa 51 is pretty bad if I remember correctly. Like a jokey country-ish Stereolab that just turns into boring typical Stereolab-sounding tracks.

Big fan of the Sean O'Hagan and Tim Gane soundtracks. Never seen the films they soundtrack.

I've yet to hear the full Cavern of Antimatter album. I really need to.

I always enjoy Monade when I actually listen to them.

Gonna have to think about this...

Missing: first Monade album, first Imitation Electric Piano mini-LP, Splitting the Atom 7", probably others.

I own all of these except for the Snowpony albums (I don't really think of these as Stereolab side-projects), the two IEP albums that are included and the second Junior Electronics thing. Heartening in many ways that I can honestly say that Silencio and Blood-Drums, the two most recent things in the poll, are head and shoulders above everything else here (that I've heard).

UIlab bothered me, it just seemed so... caucasian? (Can I say that here?)

so it was a paler shade of white, is what you're saying?

Simple Headphone Mind is prolly the best thing on here but I was really really into the first Snowpony album at the time. got a bad feeling it won't hold up if I play it now

Really liked the first couple of Snowpony things, but then I saw a terrible live show and went off them massively.

Turn On has moments of brilliance but isn't entirely consistent.

I'm guessing not many people have heard the Junior Electronics stuff - it's definitely worth a listen if you haven't.

For me it's between 'Fires' and 'Simple Headphone Mind'. I have probably spent more time listening to the former but the latter is so good. SHM it is.

Simple Headphone Mind is probably the right answer because it's ace. I might vote for Turn On just for the first three tracks, though.

Not sure Snowpony count any more than Th'Faith Healers or Billy Mahonie or, hm, wasn't Dilworth in Miss Mend too? They did a sort of anaemic (but then, aren't many of these?) and flat-vocalled Groop imitation that I nevertheless occasionally have fond memories of.

I mean, I actually really liked Snowpony, and they were a lot of fun live. But I no more think of them as a Stereolab side project than the High Llamas.

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Hey, that Schema track is great and it's on Spotify! Now to track down Mary's solo EP.

Like, Sean O'hagan was never an actual Stereolab member officially, but he pretty much was a member of the studio group... No? What keeps him from being a member of the band?

pretty sure he was listed as a band member on TRNBWA

My self-imposed rule, when I was responsible for the 'lab discog on the koly site, was to only include in the "side projects" section releases by people who were in the current Stereolab line-up at the time.

That didn't completely solve the O'Hagan problem though, for the reasons afriendlypioneer identifies. In the end though, I decided not to include The High Llamas as a side project (but if other groop members popped up on a High Llamas record, it got included in the "guest appearances" section).

It seemed like he was only present during the EPs for a while there (91-95?)... this could be my faulty memory at play.

Surely the High Llamas 'problem' is solved by the fact that they existed before Stereolab? Certainly before O'Hagan joined, anyway. And that's why Snowpony are read as a side project - they came after.

Too easy to say "Simple Headphone Mind" but it's one of my fav Stereolab things anyway.

Voted Cavern of Anti Matter, but honestly, I haven't heard most of these.

Why is Simple Headphone Mind here but not Crumb Duck?

Should this include Tim Gane's pre-'Lab solo work? His early efforts as Un-Kommuniti were recently reissued as a 4LP box set on Vinyl on Demand.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

I haven't heard most of these but Snowpony were awful so the answer isn't them. I liked some of Monade and Laetitia's solo stuff, but I really have to be in a particular mood to listen to it.

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

So the new Cavern of Anti-Matter album is pretty incredible. Anyone else hear it yet?

I also recently saw this:

FROM THE DESK OF THE HIGH LLAMAS’ SEAN O’HAGAN: TURN ON

Some time ago, 1994 or 1995, Tim Gane, Andy Ramsay and I got together with engineer Fulton Dingley in Blackwing Studios in Blackfriars to make a record which had no stated intention or sound. The idea was that no ideas were to be brought into the studio. Everything had to originate in the room with the four participants facing each other and approval had to be unanimous. It was funny and nicely odd, and sort of like a committee gathering of the Workers Revolutionary Party, circa 1974. There were plenty of rules. A bass sound could not be generated from an instrument that already been used on that track. No pure electronic tracks and no purely organic tracks. The whole project was not allowed to exceed the appointed record time, five days. No consecutive speeds. No consecutive keys. Rules and regulations. The record was released by Drag City, and we called it Turn On. Actually, the whole exercise was created to break our recording habits in our respective bands, Stereolab and the High Llamas.

We are all back in the studio in Berlin. Are we making a Turn On record? Maybe. We will let you know in a few months. Meanwhile, where did I put that rule book.

Loads more missives here:
http://www.magnetmagazine.com/category/guest-editor/

Uncut has a track from it on this month's CD, along with a School of Seven Bells track!

So the new Cavern of Anti-Matter album is pretty incredible. Anyone else hear it yet?

Out in a week. How did you get to hear it, afp? Promo? Or has it leaked?

Meanwhile, there's this taster mix, that starts with the track on the Uncut CD:
http://www.self-titledmag.com/2016/02/12/tom-furse-mini-mix-cavern-of-anti-matters-debut-album/

Yes, it did leak.

It's fantastic.

Definitely buying the album.

the ghost box single from last year is also on youtube, and it's very good/very stereolabby

there's a nice dash of klaus schulze-y sequencer sorcery to some of this

Wow, I had like 0 expectations for this Cavern of Anti-Matter album, but this is surpassing all my wildest Düsseldorf Schule Kosmische dreams!

The track with Sonic Boom is like someone time-travelled back to 1994 and asked me what my ideal music would sound like. And somehow reproduced it in a hermetically sealed space lab hurtling through time.

It was driving me nuts where that bassline from hi-hats bring the hiss was from, but that is Moebius Plank Neumeier isn't it?

Yeah, I get serious Zero Set vibes from this album, especially High Hats Bring the Hiss.

First track on this album is the mind-blower for me - one of my favorites of the year.

Is that the one with the real Blue Milk vibe to it?

It's this one: https://soundcloud.com/cavern-of-anti-matter/tardis-cymbals

Not a fan of the tracks with vocals on this album.

Almost saw then at the Moth Club a couple of weeks ago but work intervened. Curious how it went and who the mystery guests would be.

Mojo sampler recently had the Harris track along with a seven bells track and the Matmos washing machine excerpt and loads of other great stuff, suddenly I'm all "You mean these things are actually worth playing?"

this month: No.

Harris = Tardis thanks to my spelling corrector..

just got back from seeing Cavern of Anti-Matter. no mystery guests. no vocals. most satisfying show I have seen in a very long time.

I think it's linked in another thread so in case anyone missed this live set.

https://dieletztemetro.bandcamp.com/album/the-cavern-of-anti-matter-loop-de-loop-live-acud-05022015

…and a more recent one in HD video here:
http://concert.arte.tv/fr/cavern-anti-matter-la-route-du-rock-hiver

if you're in or near Berlin, Cavern of Anti-Matter is playing the By The Lake festival next month. should be a cool thing.

http://bythelake.co/en/Index

Thoughts on the new Cavern of Anti-Matter? I like it.

It's a little less crowd-pleasing than void beats/invocation trex, what with:
- the emphasis on drum machines and relatively little in the way of live drums;
- the pieces being painstakingly created (and in some cases spliced together) in the studio, as opposed to having been honed by the trio in a live context and then recorded (reminiscent of late Stereolab in that regard);
- some patience-testing moments when it sounds like the machines were left to their own devices.

I'd say it's about 80% successful overall, but that's a high percentage! In my top 3 for 2018 so far, for sure.

Thread for Cavern of Anti Matter

just to get this band out of the shadow of Stereolab