Stereolab
Sound-Dust
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Stereolab
Sound-Dust
Elektra, 2001
RiYL: Tortoise, Steve Reich, Tom Ze |
Luckily, Sound-Dust, with production assistance from longtime collaborators John McEntire and Jim O'Rourke, doesn't sound like a Stereolab album at all. The dramatic departure is evident on the somber instrumental overture "Black Ants In Sound Dust," which sounds like a Steve Reich ensemble rehearsing the instruments and the motifs of a minimalist piece.
"Spacemoth" articulates the new collage-driven aesthetic: a horn-based New Orleans funeral march and a harpsichord-like music-box melody lead to a looping percussive pattern spun according to the repetition/variation techniques of minimalism, while vocalist Laetitia Sadier holds forth with the aseptic tone of Art Bears-ish progressive-rock. Only towards the end of the album does she hum one of her trademark lullabies, but it almost sounds like a goodbye to a style or a nostalgic last look.
Propelled by a solemn piano figure and enchanting Enya-esque backing vocals, "Captain Easychord" alternates reggae horns and languid country rambling. Syncopated dance rhythms, jazzy keyboards, and Brazilian vocals populate "The Black Arts." Minimalist repetition, cool jazz, Brecht-ian cantillation, and exotic beats invigorate "Gus The Mynah Bird." Elsewhere, the multi-part vocal score of "Suggestion Diabolique" is set within a chamber concerto that runs the gamut from minimalism to dissonance. "Les Bon Bons Des Raisons" seems to close the album with an austere and at times baroque summary of its repertory.
Sure, "Baby Lulu" and "Hallucinex" retreat to Stereolab's old trick of meshing debris of lounge music, easy-listening, and film music of the 1960s (and the songs do lend the album an overall lighter, brighter feeling). And naturally, a few of the songs meander uncertainly between old and new territory. But Sound-Dust remains a major rebirth, relegating the chirpy melodies to expedients, relying less on Sadier's monotone singing, and reaching for new formats within the group's formidable compositional skills.
PIERO SCARUFFI | Piero Scaruffi runs the exhaustive music database Scaruffi.com. A native of Italy, he has also been praised for his work on the General Theory of Relativity, formal theories of the mind, and artificial intelligence. And no, we aren't making that up.