This Friday, March 20, the delightful people at Jawbone Press release my new book, Space Age Batchelor Pad Music: The Story Of Stereolab In 20 Songs. I’ve been doing the rounds, hawking it about, so I won’t go on about it too much here, other to say that if you love Stereolab - as you should - then I hope you might like it; and if you don’t love Stereolab then maybe - just maybe - it might change your mind.

To mark the occasion, I bring you a review of Stereolab live at Primavera Sound LA in 2022, which felt like a pivotal gig for the band. Some of this is in the book but I had to cut it back a lot so this is basically an exclusive for you.

*****

If Stereolab were a city, they would be London or Paris. Obvious choices, maybe, given that Tim Gane is from Essex, just outside London, and Laetitia Sadier is from Vincennes, in Paris’s eastern suburbs; but that doesn’t make it any less true. Stereolab, at their best, combine London’s wild experimentation and electrifying grit with Paris’s artsiness and slightly bourgeois revolt.

But how about LA? At first site, Los Angeles seems an unlikely place to find Stereolab, with the city’s air of slightly sleazy glamour and harsh California sun. But Los Angeles is also home to The Beach Boys, a key Stereolab influence, and is a city that thrives on cinema. Stereolab aren’t exactly Hollywood but their music has been used in TV shows like Six Feet Under (set in LA), Atlanta and Better Call Saul, as well as mainstream films like High Fidelity and Godzilla: Final Wars. So they don’t exactly flee from that world, either.

It’s interesting too that a number of the band’s fans in the hip hop world, including Tyler, the Creator, Flying Lotus and Madlib come from California - the first two from LA, Madlib from Oxnard - and in a 2012 interview with Westword Flying Lotus said that Stereolab’s music is “very California. It feels like where I live. It just feels like it was made in the sunshine.” 

He was talking specifically about Dots and Loops and the 2005 compilation album Oscillons From The Anti-Sun and this is a comparison that makes sense when you think of songs like Dots’ eminently breezy Miss Modular and The Flower Called Nowhere or Fluorescences, which kicks off Oscillons. These are songs I can imagine drifting from a mythical LA juice bar as you inline skate down to the beach or some other stereotypically attractive California behaviour.

On a personal level, I saw one of my favourite Stereolab gigs in Los Angeles, at Primavera Sound LA; a one-off edition of the Barcelona festival held in the city’s State Historic Park in September 2022. Primavera LA was a peculiar event for a European, with the festival public corralled off into separate sections of the Park, depending on whether they had hit drinking age or not, and it was all so early, with the headlining act signing off at 10.30pm. 

The crowd was young, well dressed and, as far as I could see, very sober, more focused on checking out Mitski and Clairo than pursuing the European (and, let’s face it, British) festival tradition of getting out of their collective minds. Wandering through the crowd, random people would compliment each other on their clothes, which I don’t think you get at Reading / Leeds or Download.

This is a good thing, make no mistake. But it did create an odd environment in which to watch Stereolab, whose slightly grizzled faces and tendency towards the avant garde don’t exactly feel in line with the festival’s youthful charm. 

Certainly, things get off to an inauspicious start: the band wander onto the stage slightly late and started checking their equipment to the sound of The Commodores’ Brick House. They look like fish out of water, the bright sun robbing them of their arty mystery, and when Laetitia comes on stage to address the mic, there is no roar of applause or any sign that the gig is about to begin. Instead, with the band all primed and ready to go, whoever is in control of the music decides to play another song - War’s Low Rider - and so the uncomfortable wait goes on.

After about a minute of this, Laetitia, an odd and slightly forced grin on her face, asks if we’re ready and Low Rider cuts off abruptly. It’s no surprise, perhaps, that Stereolab start off slightly shakily after all this. They kick off with Super-Electric, to howls from the crowd, but the guitars are far too quiet, cotton wool rather than sheets of lightning, and it all sounds a bit unbalanced, the bass and backing vocals way high in the mix.

As Stereolab battle through it, though, you can hear something click. The guitars become louder and start to drive the song forward; Tim does his little head shake, which means he’s into it, and Laetitia produces a series of alluring blips, bloops and twinkles from her synth.

For most bands, having started late and faced some technical wobbles, this would be the time to crank out another hit - to play things, if not safe exactly, then certainly more reassured. Stereolab, though, decide to get weird.

They follow Super-Electric with Eye of the Volcano, an aquatic jazz number originally released on seven inch single in 2006 and compiled on Fab Four Suture the same year. It’s not exactly an unknown song - setlist.fm has it as their 23rd most played song live - but it’s not an obvious choice either. 

And they drive it hard, Andy Ramsay’s energetic pulse hitting like a rakish production line robot, while Laetitia spits out lyrics about fascism, hypocrisy and freedom with a venom that elevates the song’s very sweet melody. Has anyone ever looked better wielding a left-hand guitar and vintage sunglasses than Laetitia? I don’t think so. 

“This is Refractions in the Plastic Pulse,” Laetitia then announces, “an ode to the realm of possibilities remaining open, rather than closed.” And the band are off into what is undeniably one of their stranger, most outrageously ambitious, songs.

Refractions in the Plastic Pulse is the centrepiece of Dots and Loops, Stereolab’s fifth studio album and one where, in collaboration with John McEntire, they embraced the possibilities offered by the then novel production software Pro Tools. This the band used to create grandiose song suites, none more so than the 17-and-a-half minute Refractions… , a song that ambles from perfect jazzy pop to Autechre-esque electronic tinkering. 

In the sleeve notes to the reissued Dots and Loops Tim Gane calls it “perhaps the furthest we had gone in electronically treating and modifying one of our songs” and so it is not precisely the song you expect Stereolab to treat an LA festival crowd to. 

But treat them they do and the effect is magical. The first seven or so minutes of the song are gorgeous Baroque pop, with Laetitia in fine voice; then the band pull things right back, spending the next five minutes creating a sparse electronic ambience against which Laetitia sings one of her most perfectly melancholic vocal lines. It’s as if LA is melting, like Stereolab have pulled the City of Angels into their own black hole of experimental electronics, tearing it apart in the process, only to stick it all back together with a glue of pure sunshine funk in the song’s honeyed final section.

Do the crowd love it? I think they do. But it’s almost certainly not like anything else they are going to hear in State Historic Park that afternoon.

Where do Stereolab go from there? The wonder of Refractions… is that they could go anywhere. Nothing really fits after a 17-minute sonic collage and so, in a way, everything does. “Here’s a familiar old tune,” Laetitia announces and they launch into Miss Modular, a perfectly Los Angeles-temperate song that Stereolab race through with the devious energy of a band revived. It’s Stereolab’s second most commonly-played song live but the band can still feel out new nuances in one of their greatest hits, in this case, a prominent drum machine line giving a slightly electro feel to the gilded grooves.

They follow it with Harmonium, an angry guitar number originally released in 1992, which seems to make about as much sense at this stage of the LA gig as any other song Stereolab might have played. The band attack it with verve, Joseph Watson’s space-y synth layers giving the song an unexpectedly cosmic edge against racing Motorik drums. The music seems to roll in on endless, joyous waves, culminating in a fierce guitar freak out from Tim that threatens to peel the skin off our noses.

Before the LA gig I last saw Stereolab at Primavera Sound Barcelona in 2019, at one of their first reunion shows. And I was kind of hoping for something like that here, a mixture of greatest hits - as far as Stereolab have hits - and crowd pleasers, like Ping Pong and Lo Boob Oscillator. But the LA show has been nothing like that; and I certainly wasn’t expecting what comes next: Delugeoisie, a mysteriously drifting song from the band’s not widely adored tenth album Not Music, which they deliver with perfectly curdled insouciance.

Pack Yr Romantic Mind, which follows, is similarly balanced, elegance turning on a dime into raw desire, and then it’s time to say goodbye. A lazy dusk has descended on LA and Laetitia comments on how beautiful the crowd looks in the bruised purple stage light. Initially, she suggests the last song will be Simple Headphone Mind, a 1997 collaboration with Nurse With Wound that really would have been pushing the festival boat out; but French Disko will not be denied and so, 50 minutes after the band took the stage, they leave us with their greatest revolutionary hit, which they hustle and harry like dogs at a bone. And it is magnificent.

Is ending with French Disko predictable? Perhaps. But it’s the only moment of this wonderful gig that has been. I am not quite sure what people would expect of a reformed Stereolab show in the heart of Tinseltown. But this almost certainly wasn’t it. This was far more interesting, part art happening, part musical flex, an almost random display of Stereolab’s divine and eclectic powers. And it stays with me to this day.

Some listening

Olof Dreijer - Echoed Dafnino (feat. MaMan)

Ah, the power of the thump. Olof Dreijer has been on such a hot streak for the past few years that it appears impossible that he will release his debut solo album this summer, 25 years after The Knife made their own album debut. 

Echoed Dafnino, featuring Sudanese singer MaMan is the first single to be taken from the new album - although a fair number of the songs have already been released - and it thumps like a rubber hammer on a trampoline. MaMan’s vocal is delicious, a kind of anguished, tender lament, and Dreijer gives it some of his trademark coral sea synth squiggle. But, for me, the track is all about the incredible drums, which skip, groove and menace like prime Masters at Work, before a corporeal bass line turns up to take the song home. 

Friends of mine used to ask why I - someone who loves drums - enjoyed the four four of house music so much. My answer was always that within that four four you can do so much to bring the funk and the weirdness. And Echoed Dafnino makes this abundantly clear. You won’t hear much better drum programming this year. (Oh and the rest of the album is great too.)

Chloé French - Chocolat (Tedd Patterson club mix)

It’s funny: former Line Noise podcast guest Tedd Patterson’s remix of Chloé French’s Chocolat feels like the kind of thing that should give the listener a profound commercial whiplash, with a vocal as addictively alluring as the titular food, bright synth lines, skipping drums and cut-up vocal hooks all over the place. Maybe in the 90s it would have been a hit. But this kind of bright, not-deep-but-certainly-not-shallow house music almost seems to live apart from the dance music mainstream these days, in its own corner of non-commerce. And I find that entirely charming, with extra marks for the huge, echoing New-York style drum thunder about half way in.

Potential Badboy and Junior Dangerous - We Are Dangerous (VIP Remix)

It’s Tim Reaper on the remix because of course it is - but also, frankly, who else would you want to bring Potential Badboy and Junior Dangerous’ Dancehall-tinged original song kicking and screaming into the retro future? Reaper’s take is both an absolute assault on the senses, like a dirty bomb going off inside your head, and a lot of ultra-bright fun, a perfect pop song in a world where reggae-loving robots have stomped humanity into the dust.

Lice - Who Sent You?

It’s alllllll about the bass line on Who Sent You? from Lice, a collaboration between Aesop Rock and Homeboy Sandman that I was entirely unaware of until I heard this song. That seems harsh on the two acrobatic MCs, the perfectly tough chorus they have cooked up and the song’s brilliantly nervous drums. But Christ, what a bass line, which is melodic and hard and memorable and kind-of post punk, a bit like Liquid Liquid's classic Cavern, as sampled on White Lines Don’t Do It.

Kim Gordon - Play Me

Kim Gordon’s oaken drawl plus sunshine saxophones and a beat that nods to golden era 90s hip hop is so much not what I was expecting from the great woman that I almost fell out of my chair. But Christ this is wonderful, a song that totally embodies the sleazy sunshine of LA - see above - just in time for spring. (And this newsletter.)

Things I’ve done

"Daft Punk’s ‘Discovery’ changed my life": 21 tales of the iconic album's endless influence

Ah yes the glory days, when all I did was go on a bout Daft Punk’s Discovery, rather than Stereolab. Anyway, I wrote a big tribute piece to Discovery on its 25th birthday, speaking to 21 different people about the album’s influence. 

Includes some proper Daft Punk lore from Christophe Monier, too. “Suddenly, Thomas came out with something that remained etched in my memory: "My ambition is to create a global pop brand." He then went on to list a few examples of global artists who had reached the status he aspired to: I don’t remember the exact list, but David Bowie was definitely on it, and very likely Prince and Michael Jackson. I was left speechless. I wasn’t even sure I understood.” 

Daft Punk's 'Discovery' at 25 (Silver Liner Notes)

…. and talking of Discovery, I was a guest on WNYC’s All Of It show last week to talk about the album’s birthday. And you can listen again to that here.

Shy One - Mali

I reviewed the new Shy One album for DJ Magazine. “Adventurous, soulful and seeped in future funk, ‘Mali’ suggests a musical life well lived.” 

Line Noise podcast - A Stereolab book special with Johann Wald and Ben Cardew

Shameless, I know. But, if you feel so inclined you can listen to Johann Wald and me discussing on the new podcast how, whys and wherefores of the new book, including why I decided to write it in the first place, the choice of the 20-song structure and trawling the Stereolab back catalogue for themes and oddness. 

The playlists

Every week, I write,

Of playlists.

Sisyphus sighs.

And continues to roll his boulder.

And yet

They are mine.

On Apple Music: The newest and bestest 2026.

On Spotify: the newest and bestest 2026.

Apple Music: The newest and the bestest

Spotify: The newest and the bestest.