<< Return to Home 

Stereolab - Margerine Eclipse


An overload of print journalism on old dead bands has annoyed me so much that it's driven me to decide that this year is new music year. Normally I would buy quite a bit of new music but also a lot of back catalogue stuff. This year I want to be able to look back and say that I properly sampled all the delights that 2004 had to offer so any CD cash I have is going on new releases and not old stuff.

In light of this the last few weeks has brought a number of new records my way, the first of which is the new Stereolab CD Margerine Eclipse -

Chris Morris has been involved in some of the best and also most contraversial comedy series over the last 10 years or so from The Day Today to Jam and Brass Eye. Way back when though he was a DJ. He did about 4/5 years on the London station GLR and in 1994 moved to Radio 1 where he produced 24 programs of great entertaining radio. This was around about the time of the Bannister shake up at Radio 1 when the station was going through huge transition but was also producing a lot of really interesting music and non music output. Morris's show, which he presented along with Peter Baynham, was a mixture of music, phone pranks, celebrity interviewing by Wayne Carr and various flights of fancy concocted in the studio by Morris and Baynham. It frequently ran into trouble with those it sought to send up and was sued a couple of times leading to suspensions for Morris and ultimately the show being pre-recorded rather than going out live. I guess that certain interviewees didn't appreciate Wayne Carr's lines of questioning and certainly announcing the death of Michael Heseltine wasn't well received to say the least.

I can't remember if I heard any of these shows first time round but thankfully thanks to this site I can enjoy them now. I have almost all the shows from previous downloads but I've been grabbing them again since they've been putting up broadcast quality rips from DAT. Listening to these shows now is to hear how Radio 1 has changed. Morris was obviously given free reign to play what he wanted so the music runs the gamut from Serge Gainsbourg, The Velvet Underground and Steely Dan to Deee Lite, Public Enemy and Ice Cube. One of the songs he plays that I suppose was probably out about the same time as some of these shows were broadcast is Ping Pong by Stereolab. This is a song I loved at the time and bought on single back in the days when I used to buy such things. Every so often I'll hear that song and be reminded how good Stereolab can be and think to myself "I must go out and buy their new record". Which is exactly what just happened and it really was worth it.

There's a school of thought that it's all been downhill since Emperor Tomato Ketchup. Not sure this is the case since I haven't heard all the records they've released since then. Certainly I enjoyed some of Sound Dust, their last record, despite not feeling the need to hear it very much. However, I think the new one Margerine Eclipse has some great things on it, songs I know that I'll return to.

It kicks off with one of the best 'Vonal Declosion'. You can tell it's them straight away - a few drum beats and in come the keyboards and one of those great bubbly bass lines they do so well. It's already so recognisable as Stereolab, their sound is so well defined now, but then comes Laetitia Sadier singing about who knows what in French and the picture is complete. It's a great Summer song with a wonderful breezy melody.

Another favourite is Margerine Rock, this time sung in English, but it sounds like another classic. A bit more motorik in it's rhythm but the closest that Stereolab will come to a driving rock song even including a bit of a guitar freakout near the end.

Obviously losing guitarist and vocalist Mary Hansen to a cycling accident last year must have affected the band greatly but though she is commemorated by some of music and lyrics here this is far from a maudlin album and at least musically really couldn't be more upbeat and optimistic.

One interesting point to listen out for is that no sound in the left channel is duplicated in the right and vice versa. This basically means lots of different things going on in both ears but nothing in the middle of the stereo picture. Odd.

21:16 | 0 Comments, | permanent link

...................................................................................................................

Powered By Blogbear
(c) Copyright 2003-2004.