It's Friday morning. The sun has risen in the heavens. My lesson is planned. My powerpoint sent. My bath is run. I am free for two hours. I can sit at my desk, don my headphones and listen to the new Stereolab album Instant Holograms on Metal Film.
I lost track with the Pop narrative somewhat after 2000 but from 1980 to 2000 I was properly engaged with it . It's difficult when you're listening to CDs. My band of the Eighties was clearly R.E.M. I've written no end about them on here. In the Nineties there was Grunge, there was Hip Hop there was Brit Pop, there was any amount of music that I craved and devoured, but if asked what music from those years meant most to me .I'd probably opt for albums from the Trip Hop artists. Most notably Massive Attack. And I'd listen to Stereolab.
Like Kraftwerk before them Stereolab seem to plot a course to the future. An alternative way of looking at life that is not just the next round of football fixtures, soap operas and nonsensical conspiracy theory, surveillance and control. Stereolab always map alternative ways of organising societies, ways of considering and doing things, organisimg as a collective and sub collectives.
Nothing has changed on Instant Holograms on Metal Film,It's a linear and sciemtifically realised vision that's as beautifully realised as a room of Escher drawings. An Ursula Le Guin novel a movie classic like Silent Runnings or an impeccably planned meal or adventure weekend. An escape into thinking.
The clinical daring of Stereolab reamains astonishing. Their records continue to be plotted workouts that take the listener to another geometric space. Read the excellent review and interview in the current Uncut Magazine for a more detailed narrative and discussion of its plotlines. For me as six o'clock beckons, the record is more than enough. This will soundtrack my day. And many days ahead.
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